


The Protector

by airgeer



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Divination, Falling In Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airgeer/pseuds/airgeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine was sent away from his home country to protect his family's reputation. Kurt isn't talented at divining the future, but his dreams keep spilling over into reality. Their meeting will wreck their reputations, but give them something to keep going for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for last year's [Kurt/Blaine Reversebang](http://kbl-reversebang.livejournal.com/), for hedgerose's art, which you can find [here](http://hedgerose.tumblr.com/post/26961312454/title-the-protector-author-airgeer) on tumblr, so if it looks familiar, that's why :)

**The Protector**   


~*~

Blaine ducked and spun, dodging a heavy blow from his opponent and attacking him from the side. He scored a hit and danced away, knowing from experience that it would only make the large young man he was fighting angrier and not wanting to get hit when he lashed out.

“Stop running, coward!” Paul spat after him, charging. Blaine didn’t respond, choosing to instead sidestep the charge and lay a powerful stroke on his back as he passed, wooden sword connecting with a crack of bone as one of his ribs gave way.

An injury like that meant the end of the bout. He’d won, he usually did against the ones who thought they could get away with using their size and power against someone who actually practiced his swordplay, but he kept his sword up. He couldn’t trust that his sparring partner would stop.

Fortunately for his nose’s continued state of unbroken, he wasn’t surprised when Paul stopped and spun, throwing his reinforced wooden practice sword at Blaine’s face with an angry yell. He deflected it and sidestepped, letting the sword drop to the courtyard.

“And that, Protectors, is why Blaine is Swordmaster’s assistant and you are not. I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself next time, or at least do it outside of training hours so you aren’t wasting everyone’s time.” Jaq frowned severely. “Take a lap, one of you get Paul to the healing hall, then break up into partners. Blaine.” Blaine jerked to attention, and she continued, gesturing at his sword, “Put that away, you’re with me. There’s someone here to see you.”

With faint grumbling, the rest of his training mates started off at a run, clearing the weapon racks. Blaine stowed the sword and jogged back to Jaq. “Who’s here to see me?” he asked, unable to control his curiosity any longer. No one ever came to see him.

She didn’t answer right away, instead leading the way into the tower and waiting until they were climbing the stairs. “It’s your lord father, Blaine. I want you to remember that no matter how he says it to you, this is a great honour.” Jaq wasn’t looking at him, instead pulling at her braided hair, still dark but beginning to fade to gray. “Don’t go back to your quarters after he’s done. Come to mine. I have something for you.”

“What are you talking about?” Blaine asked, confused and beginning to feel apprehensive. “Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Last time I checked, I was still Swordmaster, veteran of over thirty years of protecting, and you were still Swordmaster’s assistant, five missions and one battle into his protecting career.” She said it sharply, and Blaine turned his head away, accepting the rebuke. She touched his shoulder and softened. “I am not permitted to tell you, and I selfishly do not wish for you to hear this from me. Be patient, Blaine.” She nodded to David as they passed him, but stopped on the steps suddenly. “Diviner!”

David stopped at the hail, turning and looking up at them. “Aunt? Is something wrong?” He was trying to look innocent, Blaine knew his friend, but he was doing a lousy job. David never did anything even remotely wrong and wasn’t really very good at it. He _had_ befriended Blaine, though. That in itself was probably enough to get him disowned eventually.

“Don’t you play that game with me, young man,” she said. “I know for a fact that you were planning to spend the day drying herbs and that you were there an hour ago, what were you doing up there?”

“I had to requisition something from stores,” he said quickly, nodding.

“Oh? Where is it?” Jaq had an almost playful smile on her face now. Playful like a shark was playful, anyway.

It barely showed against his dark skin, but David flushed. Blaine hastily interrupted when he began to try again. “Weren’t we just talking this morning about how you needed a new mortar and pestle?”

“Yes, yes,” David said. “Um, yes.” He dug his well-worn mortar and pestle out of his belt pouch. “See?” He waved them around for a second and then tucked them away again. “I’m going to go now, if that’s alright.” Jaq waved her hand, and David made a break for it, disappearing around the corner.

“That boy, honestly,” Jaq sighed. “I guess I should just count myself lucky he isn’t a Protector, because he’d be hopeless at it.”

“Sorry, Jaq,” Blaine said. “He probably overheard that my father was here and got curious.”

They had reached the landing, and Jaq sighed heavily again. “Of course he did. Remember, my quarters after.” She gave him a little push towards the door and started up the stairs again.

“Thank you!” Blaine called after her, butterflies fluttering about in his stomach. Or maybe it was more like snakes writhing against each other and trying to escape, because he wasn’t sure that throwing up wasn’t in the cards for him. _Should’ve asked David to do a reading on it_ , he thought jokingly, taking deep breaths to calm himself.

The door opened as he was about to knock on it. “Enter,” his father said, turning his back as he returned to his seat. Blaine stood in front of him, a respectful distance away. “Do you know why I’m here?”

“No, Father,” he said, looking him straight in the eye. “What do you need?”

“The visibility of our family has increased recently at court, and as such, there are whispers about us. About you. Speculation about what happened between you and the Smythe boy, why you entered the Tower so suddenly. There was talk before, but it has intensified recently, to the point where the honour of having a Protector for a son is outweighed by the rumours that he is abnormal.”

Blaine kept his mouth shut, but felt a sudden, harsh jolt of reality. Of course they were whispering about him, Lord Anderson’s queer little second son, who would never have heirs. Blaine bit his lip and felt the first swells of anger.

“Their majesties wish to strengthen relations with Farhold, and they have decided that one step they will take is to send one of our young Protectors in exchange for one of theirs. I requested that you be sent, and your masters did not object. Do you understand?”

The anger folded under the rush of desperate hurt, that he was being sent away, that his father would have him out of reach rather than deal with him. “I understand,” he said, his voice cracking.

His father didn’t smile, but his voice wasn’t so harsh when he spoke again. “It’s a delicate situation right now, Blaine. I can’t have you here, damaging our family’s reputation, not while everything is going on. This will be for the best for all of us.”

Blaine nodded, not willing to speak again. Of course, he then immediately realized that he was still missing quite a lot of information, so he swallowed his pride and accepted that his distress would be obvious. “When do I leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

Blaine blinked hard to stop the sudden pricking of tears at the corners of his eyes. “For how long?”

“Indefinitely.”

His father rose, and Blaine mechanically turned to open the door for him. “I can show myself out,” he said, waving a hand at him in dismissal. “Be well, Blaine.”

~*~

_He walked, slowly as if he was wading through water, and death reigned all about him. He stopped at the body of someone that he was supposed to know, he knew that he was supposed to know her, but her face was blurred and unrecognizable._

_“Who are you?” he asked the corpse._

_She rolled over and grabbed his face, gripping so hard with her skeletal fingers that he felt skin break. “The question you should ask is ‘Why am I seeing this?’” she said, voice echoing around them._

_He opened his mouth to ask, but his tongue was thick and unwieldy, unable to form words. A warm hand clasped his shoulder suddenly, and the corpse released his face. He craned his head about to see a boy standing behind him, face as blurry as the corpses’._

_The boy began to speak-_

“Hummel! Fuck’s sake, wake up!” The sharp slap of cold water in his face was enough to shock him out of the vision, and Kurt sat up, sputtering and choking.

“What is _wrong_ with you?!” he snapped before he could think better of it. Karofsky smirked at him, like he’d just been waiting for the opening, and crouched over him, leaning into Kurt’s personal space.

“What’s wrong with me? Not much, that I can think of. I’m one of the most skilled Protectors of our age group left in our Tower, the Towermaster thinks I’m awesome, and on top of that, I have the body and voice of a _normal_ man, rather than one who’s just pretending to not be a woman. Now you, on the other hand,” he looked mockingly up and down Kurt’s body. “You’re barely a Diviner, much less a valuable one. You’re never going to find your Protector, because there is no one in the entire world who would want to be with such a _freak_.”

Kurt clenched his jaw, willing himself to not respond. They were all alone on this trip, and if he pissed Karofsky off enough, well, he was perfectly capable of only hitting Kurt where it wouldn’t show. The irony of a Protector beating up his assigned Diviner didn’t escape him, but he’d been thrown into enough stone walls at the Tower that he didn’t think Karofsky would hesitate, particularly not when there was no one around to stop him.

Karofsky shoved him down and stood up. “Get up, and let’s go,” he ordered. “I don’t want to spend any more time with you then I have to.”

“That’s a great stance for a Protector to take,” Kurt snarked. Keeping quiet wasn’t going to stop Karofsky from hitting him, so he might as well get his own back. He imitated Karofsky’s voice and mocked, “You can trust me to keep you safe while you’re drugged and unconscious, but I’ll continuously pummel you otherwise.” He sneered at Karofsky, not bothering to sit up. “I know it’s my first mission out of the Tower, but I’m fairly certain you aren’t behaving according to regulations.”

Karofsky stooped closer suddenly, straddling him and squatting to grip Kurt’s biceps. “You should keep your mouth shut about Protector regulations while it’s just you and me out here. The only reason I haven’t made everyone’s lives better and arranged a fatal accident for you is that it would be a black mark on my record to lose my Diviner.”

Kurt knew it was a bad idea, he _knew_ it was, but he couldn’t stop himself. “I feel sorry for you. It must be hard to go through life being such a _coward_ that you have to threaten-”

Karofsky dropped his full weight onto him, crushing the air out of his lungs. “You don’t know a thing about me,” he snarled, face so close to Kurt’s that he couldn’t focus on it. “I would worry about myself, if I were you.”

He rolled off of Kurt and stood up, face flushed with anger. Kurt wheezed as he tried to catch his breath, and decided to hold his tongue. “Now get up, and get ready to move out.” Karofsky turned his back, strapping his bedroll to the top of his pack. Kurt curled up on his side, clutching at his sore chest until he got his breathing under control.

His hands were still shaking as he dressed himself and packed up his gear. He gripped the small leather pouch that held the Tarot cards he had painted himself and checked his supply of trance herbs to make sure Karofsky hadn’t emptied them onto the ground while he slept. The familiar motions were comforting, and he thought to himself, _It’s six more days with him maximum, Kurt, and then you can request to never be sent out with him again. All you have to do is not goad him into murdering you, so stop it._

He didn’t know how he was going to be able to drink the tea that would ease his path into a trance and make himself vulnerable with Karofsky nearby. The entire point of a Protector was having someone there who the Diviner could trust when they performed a reading, who would keep them safe when the drugs and trance removed all ability to protect themselves. Kurt just hoped that having other people around would prevent Karofsky from doing anything.

~*~

It didn’t.

~*~

Blaine sat in Jaq’s quarters, twiddling his thumbs together and pointedly not thinking about how he was essentially being exiled from his home at his father’s behest. Jaq sat across from him patiently, waiting for him to look up.

“Blaine.” Apparently her patience only extended so far. “Blaine, I would have put your name forward for this even if your father hadn’t beaten me to it.”

 “Why would you do that?” he asked, barely surprised. She had insisted that it was an honour, after all. Blaine failed to see how his family sending him as far away as possible so they wouldn’t have to deal having a son who didn’t want to be with a woman was an honour, but there it was.

“Because your Diviner is not here, Blaine. We all know that. You would go on mission after mission, with men _and_ women, hoping that the one who you protected would be the right one, but you would be disappointed every time. Farhold may be kinder to you.”

Blaine felt a sudden glimmer of faint hope. He had known that no Diviner in his Tower would be his when it had become abundantly clear that there was no one else who was like him there. Permanent Protector-Diviner partnerships were not always sexual, but there were few enough exceptions that Blaine hadn’t believed that he would be one. He just counted himself lucky that at least partnerships between two women or two men were allowed now, although they were still uncommon outside of temporary pairings for a single mission. Single mission assignments tended to ignore gender, simply sending out whoever was available.

Jaq nodded. “You may still not find him, but at the very least you will be out of your father’s influence. This is a good thing, Blaine, even though I can see that you are hurt. I will find a new assistant, and you will be useful there. Life will continue.”

Blaine nodded, already feeling slightly better. Jaq went to her wardrobe and pulled out a wrapped bundle. “I know that you prefer sword to magic, even if you do have the Talent to be a powerful magical Protector, and so I acquired this for you.” She handed it to Blaine, and he unwrapped it to reveal the intricately styled hilt and scabbard of a broadsword.

“Jaq,” he said, awed. “Jaq, it’s beautiful, thank you.”

  
“It’s a far cry above standard equipment, I know, but I wanted you to have something worthwhile to remember us by. It has been an honour to be your teacher, Blaine.”

He hugged her on impulse, and she hugged back after a brief hesitation that Blaine chalked up to surprise. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Now, you have a lot to do before you leave tomorrow, so I suggest that you prepare yourself, and say good bye to your friends. David in particular will be rather broken up by this, I imagine, and you should stop him before he goes and spreads gossip about whatever he overheard earlier.”

Blaine nodded, but paused by the door. “Thank you, Jaq, for everything,” he said. “You’ve done more for me than you’ll ever know.”

Jaq nodded, and Blaine thought he saw the faint hint of tears in her eyes. He nodded to her, and left, closing the door behind him quietly.

~*~

The ship was smelly, incredibly so. Blaine had known that ships weren’t necessarily pleasant smelling, but the pervasiveness of the stench was unexpected. By the time he got off the ship at Farhold, he almost couldn’t smell it anymore, but he knew it clung to him like a needy kitten. A kitten that had been living in a dung heap.

He took a room at an inn as far from the waterfront as he could. It was nearly a half day’s travel to the Tower from the port, which he was grateful for. It would give him time to air out all of his belongings.

He didn’t even need to request a bath. The innkeep took one sniff at him and sent him out to the stables with a borrowed shirt and trousers to bathe, and sent his pack off to a launderer. Blaine was grateful, really. He hadn’t been looking forward to washing everything himself.

His pack was returned the next morning, completely cleaned and belongings intact. A faint odour still lingered, or so Blaine guessed when the innkeep wrinkled her nose at it. He couldn’t smell it anymore, at least, and that was good enough.

Finding a good horse was easy since trips supported by royalty were well-funded, at least, and Blaine set off in the direction of the Tower. Towers were built just far enough away from settlements to support the idea of how they were separated from everyday life. Although the Towers served the monarchs of their countries and were loyal, they kept themselves slightly apart as a tradition that no one remembered the original need for any longer.

Blaine saw the oncoming boy first. He pulled his horse to a slower walk to clearly show that he wasn’t a threat, and was glad he had when he was close enough to see the other boy’s features, dark like a thundercloud.

“Hello,” he greeted politely, dismounting. “Blaine Anderson, of Wester Tower.”

The other guy scowled at him, not bothering to dismount. “Dave Karofsky, Farhold Tower. What did you do to deserve this?”

Blaine froze, taken aback. “Nothing,” he lied quickly. “This exchange is an honour.”

“Sure, because everyone wants to be sent away from their home so that some pansy-ass Diviner who can barely even get into a trance will stop whining.” The guy’s face got even darker. “Just a word of advice, avoid Hummel. He’s a liar and a freak, and he’ll do the same to you that he did to me.”

Blaine shut his mouth with a snap. “I have honestly no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“You will,” he said, spurring his horse and trotting away.

“Um, well, good luck!” Blaine called after him. “Have a good trip!”

The guy waved a dismissive hand at him, and Blaine pulled himself back atop the horse, shaking his head in disbelief and unsure if he should take his advice about “Hummel” or not. Probably Dave had just been surprised by being sent away as Blaine had been, and was still angry, but what if he was right, and that guy was trouble?

Blaine turned the encounter over in his head as he rode, not having anything better to do. The Tower became visible around mid-afternoon, and all thought of Dave Karofsky was chased away in favour of thoughts of the Diviner he’d be partnered with. What would he look like? Would it be a he? Maybe Farhold had someone that was different the way Blaine was, the person that Blaine was meant to be with, strong and kind and clever and-

The sudden realization that he was getting giddy imagining a guy he’d never met was like a dash of cold and embarrassing water to the face. Blaine laughed at himself a little and readjusted his sword from where it was digging into his hip.

The Tower gates swung open for him as he approached, and he rode into the courtyard, where a tall blond woman waited for him. He dismounted and bowed. “Blaine Anderson, of Wester Tower.”

“You’re not of Wester Tower anymore, bucko,” the woman said. “Sue Sylvester, Towermaster of Farhold Tower. I suppose I should welcome you to Farhold. I was going to have Porcelain do it, but he’s in a sulk and locked himself in his room. Some people just don’t have manners.” She turned and walked away, and someone took his horse’s reins from him.

The Towermaster was leaving him behind, and Blaine hurried to catch up. “I hear you’d prefer a male Diviner, so in the interests of keeping him from whining I’m going to send you out with Porcelain. We’ve had a request come in from a Southern Lord, one of the unimportant ones, for a reading about next year’s crops. Should be a simple little milk run for the two of you.” She fell silent and kept walking, opening the doors to the Tower proper and starting up the stairs.

Blaine followed obediently, wishing that Jaq hadn’t included that tidbit of information about his preferences in her correspondence and brimming with questions but too intimidated to speak, until she stopped and turned around, staring down at him. Blaine shrunk a little under the intensity of her glare, bemused. “Why are you still following me?” she asked.

Blaine opened his mouth to answer, but she was already climbing again. “Go bother Porcelain or something, littlest Protector, I have things to do.”

She rounded the corner and disappeared, leaving Blaine standing by himself and wondering. Why would Porcelain whine if he and Blaine weren’t paired together, unless...Unless Porcelain was the same way, and Blaine was about to meet a boy like him. He crooked his mouth a little involuntarily. Maybe it was shallow, but he really hoped Porcelain wasn’t the guy’s real name. What kind of parents would inflict a name like that on their child?

He turned around and went back to the first floor, looking for someone who wasn’t too busy. He caught the sleeve of a girl around his age that had the tell-tale card pouch of a Diviner as she walked past him. “Um, excuse me? I’m looking for Porcelain?” He cringed a little saying the name out loud.

“He’s probably in his room,” she said. “I haven’t seen him yet, and Kurt always comes to see me and Finn when we visit, so he must not know we’re here.”

Okay, so Porcelain was a nickname. Kurt was definitely an improvement. “Okay, um, where can I find his room?” Blaine smiled winningly at her, watching out of the corner of his eye as an unfairly tall guy ended his conversation and headed over.

“He’s on the fourth level. You’re...who, exactly?” she looked at him suspiciously, and he bowed.

“Blaine Anderson, um, formerly of Wester Tower? I was sent on an exchange to improve relations between our countries? The Towermaster told me to go find ‘Porcelain’.” He shrugged, and the girl smiled at him.

“Of course!” she exclaimed, whirling about and almost into the big guy, who had come to stand beside her. “Finn! Finn, this is Blaine, he’s the Protector from Wester Tower. Sue sent him to find Kurt.” She turned back to Blaine. “A group of us were friends, but most of us have already found our partners and left the Tower. Kurt’s the only one of us still left here now, after Sam and Mercedes and Quinn left a little while ago, and we make a special point to come back every time we’re in the area so he doesn’t get lonely.”

Blaine smiled at that. It was sweet of them. Blaine was pretty sure that he didn’t have anyone at Wester Tower who’d go out of their way to come see him if he was lonely, and it was nice.

“Hi Blaine,” Finn said, peering down at him like he was a bug, or maybe that was Blaine just being paranoid, too used to big guys turning out to want to beat him into the ground. “Rachel, I don’t think Kurt’s going to want to see us.”

“Why not?” she asked indignantly.

“Can we...?” He jerked his head to the side in an awkward gesture while looking at Blaine, and he got the message.

“It was very nice to meet you,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your conversation. Excuse me?” They barely noticed, Rachel suddenly concerned and Finn preoccupied.

He was curious, of course he was, but he wasn’t rude enough to eavesdrop. He went back to the stairs and started climbing, hoping that the fourth level would be three flights up, like it should be.

He emerged into a hall of doors that wound about, and started off. The doors were labeled, but with ridiculous nicknames rather than real names. He found the door that said ‘Porcelain’, and stood there, trying to work up the courage to knock.

He finally heaved a deep breath and rapped his knuckles on the door, to no response. He thought for a second, confused. The Towermaster had said that he had locked himself in his room and was sulking, and his friends had said that he would’ve come to see them if he’d known they were there. That meant he was probably in there, but that he was either refusing to answer or unable to answer.

“Hello?” he called. “Kurt?” There was no answer, and he tried again. “Kurt? Um, Porcelain?” There was still no answer, but a tiny trickle of smoke came out from under the door. Blaine knocked again, harder. “Are you okay?”

His imagination had kicked into a gallop, and he imagined a boy lying unconscious on the floor as his room burned around him. “Screw that,” he said, trying the knob. The door was locked, and he called up magic to open the locks. The door shook slightly, but didn’t click open, and Blaine could’ve kicked himself when he realized that they were in a _Tower_ , that of course a Protector’s magic wouldn’t be able to open a lock or there would be almost no point to having a lock.

He was just about to pull out his dagger and attempt to pick the lock manually, knowing that it was a futile effort to pick a magical lock, when the door clicked audibly and unlocked. Blaine opened the door quickly, looking for the fire, but there was only a boy, slim and pale-faced, sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding a thick set of cards. Incense swirled around him, and the chamber’s sole light aside from the door was from three candles set about him.

There was an empty teacup beside him, what was presumably trance herbs stuck to the bottom, but the boy still looked almost alert, which meant that Blaine had managed to interrupt just as he began to go under. _Oh, good job, Blaine,_ he scolded himself sarcastically. _Really good first impression. I’m sure that when he comes out of his trance he’ll be thrilled to meet the person who interrupted his reading._

“Blaine?” the boy said, sounding dull and uninterested. Blaine recognized the early signs of trance, and nodded, about to make his excuses and leave. “Kurt. Come in and close the door.”

Blaine looked out at the hallway and then back to Kurt, who was holding out his deck for Blaine to take. He closed the door, the lock clicking shut immediately, and then looked back to Kurt. Even in the dim light, he looked distressed, but that was quickly fading as he settled into his trance. Blaine sat in front of him and accepted the deck, admiring the paint job on the top card, The Fool. Blaine began to shuffle.

“Concentrate on a question,” Kurt whispered, “Or keep your mind clear if you do not have one.”

Blaine had a question, in fact he had too many questions, that was the problem, so he chose to think of none of them. After a moment, Kurt held out his hand for the deck.

“This is you, Blaine Anderson,” he whispered. “We’re going to be very important to each other.”

~*~

When a Diviner was identified, it was usually through childish premonitions. They would begin to talk about a younger sibling before their mother knew she was pregnant, or they would wake up crying about the death of an elderly relative before it happened. Sometimes it was as simple as knowing which side of a die would land face up, or as complex as dreaming of an attack on their town before it happened.

Regardless of how it happened, when an identified Diviner reached twelve, or even earlier for some, they would be sent to the tower to learn how to channel their power through cards. Diviners could be called upon to predict anything from the crop yields in the next year to the outcome of wars, and that power was trained and harnessed for the good of all.

Protectors were different. Those that were born to it had a small magical Talent, useful for all manner of small tricks though not strong enough for the child to become a Mage, but their main requirement was a protective instinct. When a Diviner took the herbs that would push them into a trance, they were essentially helpless. The drugs made their bodies clumsy and uncoordinated, and cleared their minds of the present to be filled with shadows of the future. Until they wore off, they could not defend themselves. A Protector was there to take care of them until they could again, but was more than that. A partner, a trusted companion, often a lover.

And that was what made the thought of Karofsky so horrific to Kurt now.

He hadn’t told anyone what had happened, just stood there silently as Karofsky had lied to Towermaster Figgins. It was in his record now, that he had commited theft from the Tower and run away from his Protector’s custody, forcing him to track him down and delaying their return to the Tower. He couldn’t bring himself to admit the truth, and he wouldn’t have been believed, not by Figgins. Not for the first time, he desperately wished that Mercedes was still in the Tower. She would have believed him, helped him, and he wouldn’t have felt so desperately alone.

But Mercedes had left with Sam and Quinn while he had been gone with Karofsky, and he was confined to the Tower as punishment. He’d been self-confined to his room for over a month now, trying to keep Karofsky away from him, venturing out only in the dead of night to clean up and bring back supplies. He went out at a different time every night, hoping that Karofsky wouldn’t try to corner him, and then went back and locked his door, leaving his window as his only point of contact with the outside.

He didn’t think anyone had noticed he’d disappeared. He wasn’t a powerful Diviner by any stretch. The nightmares that had brought him early to the Tower and kept him there when his agemates were being sent out on their first missions had made it difficult for him to relax control enough to slip into a trance, and his readings had never been as clear as Rachel’s. He’d needed stronger doses of trance herbs than anyone else he knew, and all of that translated into a Diviner that no one outside of his immediate circle of friends cared about. So no, he hadn’t expected anyone to notice.

The first inkling he had that someone had was when Sue Sylvester banged on his door one morning. “Porcelain, I’m coming in.” She didn’t phrase it as a request or a command, simply as a fact. She wanted the door opened, therefore Kurt would open it. Of anyone in the tower besides the Towermaster, who could open any lock, she would be the most likely to be able to bypass the magic that only the tenant of the room was supposed to be able to control. He surrendered to the inevitable and opened the lock, not bothering to move from where he was seated on the floor with pots of paint spread about him, touching up the faces of his cards. The three of cups had an entire flake gone from its face, and that was simply unacceptable.

He focused on the delicate detail, refusing to look away from his work until she grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. He reluctantly met her eyes, the expression on her face completely indecipherable. He’d always thought that she hadn’t held him in quite the same degree of disdain as she did so many others in the Tower, but then, none of Masters had spoken up to help him, including her. Probably she had an errand that needed running and Kurt was the only one available, since Quinn was gone now.

“David Karofsky,” she said suddenly. Kurt jolted, dropping both the card and his paintbrush and jerking his head away from her grip to make sure he wasn’t there. The room was empty except for them, and silent except for the sound of his suddenly pounding heartbeat in his ears and the birdsong filtering in through the open window.

He had given too much away, far too much, and he tried to school his expression back into indifference, picking up his paintbrush and the card with trembling hands to begin painting again. A cool hand closed over his, and he jerked again, but at least he managed to keep his grip on the brush.

“You can’t paint while your hands are doing that,” Sue said, voice reassuringly matter-of-fact. She removed the brush from his hand and laid it down, taking the card from his other hand and placing it back in order. “Go sit on the bed.”

He obeyed, watching as she replaced the lids on his paint pots and cleaned his brush, leaving his cards where he had. She dragged the only chair in his room over and sat down, leaning forward and studying his face. Kurt averted his eyes, uncomfortable.

“You’re scared of him,” she said. Kurt shook his head, and she held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t lie to me, it’s obvious. How long has it been since you’ve left your room?” Kurt shrugged. “I had Becky speak to the kitchen staff. They said that you’ve been there, but only at night and you’ve never spoken to anyone. As far as anyone else remembers, they haven’t seen you since you were standing beside David Karofsky with your hands tied together, nodding along to everything he said.”

Kurt forced a casual shrug, knowing that it was a futile effort. Sue apparently knew exactly what was going on, and he wasn’t going to be able to lie to her. “Karofsky is one of Towermaster Figgins’ pets, and when it’s your word against his, you knew that you weren’t going to win. Smart of you, to know when you’re beaten, but what you’ve missed while you’ve been locked up in here is that Figgins isn’t Towermaster anymore. I am.”

She smirked at his jerk of surprise, and then cut him off when he tried to talk. “No, you’re listening now, Porcelain, don’t interrupt. As of this morning, David Karofsky has been sent to Wester Tower, along with a letter from me describing the situation that I sent separately. He’s never going to do what he did to you again.”

_You don’t even_ know _what he did_ , Kurt wanted to scream. Instead he nodded.

“Blaine Anderson is expected to arrive this afternoon. He’s supposedly a skilled Protector, or at least as skilled as they can be when not trained by me, and a good person, which I think is overrated, but possibly necessary, as far as you’re concerned. He’s also about as interested in women romantically as you are, which his masters thought would be valuable information for me for some reason, and I’m sending you out with him.”

Sue stood up, apparently having finished talking. Kurt stared at her, aware that his eyes were wide and surprised, but unable to process that he’d bared his soft underbelly to Sue Sylvester and she hadn’t torn it out, had helped him. Had found someone like him ( _like_ _Karofsky_ , but he couldn’t think of that) for a Protector.

“I’m not going to force you to go, but I don’t think I’ll have to. You’re no coward.” Kurt looked up at her and she shook her head. “Next time I want to see you, _you’re_ coming to _me_ , Porcelain. You’re safe in this Tower now.”

She turned and left, closing the door behind her and leaving Kurt dumbfounded on the bed. It took him long minutes before he recovered from the shock that was a one-sided conversation with Sue Sylvester enough to lock the door, and he when he looked down at his hands they were still trembling. Painting was done for now.

He pulled the drapes across the window, casting the room into shadows. He lay back on the bed and cast a hand over his eyes.

Karofsky was gone, and Sue knew that the story she’d received wasn’t what had happened. Kurt hoped that she didn’t know what, and guilt began to roil in his belly. He hadn’t told anyone, and who knew how many Diviners Karofsky had been close to in the last month. What if Sue knew because he’d done the same thing to one of them and they hadn’t been too afraid to report it?

Sue’s voice echoed in his ears repeating _“You’re no coward,”_ but if she had known, if anyone had known...He rolled over, curling his knees up to his chest and hugging them tight. It was his fault, if Karofsky hurt anyone else. He didn’t cry, he was long past tears, but he closed his eyes and tried desperately to think of something, anything else.

He didn’t notice when he dozed off, but he noticed when he began to dream.

_Death was with them, writhing corpses clutching at his ankles and trying to drag him down. A castle burned in front of him, and swords littered the ground. The boy beside him gripped his hand tightly, and then they were falling._

Kurt woke up slowly, like his dreams were trying to keep him under. That vision was nothing new, something that he’d been seeing off and on since before Karofsky, but he had no idea what it meant. His dreams had always been like that, full of dark omens and little detail. It was one of the reasons why Diviners were trained to direct their visions through Tarot, something that usually toned down or completely stopped the dreams. Kurt’s dreams had never stopped.

Now though, the knowledge that he would have to leave his room soon, that he was out of options, spurred him into action. He hadn’t had nearly enough sleep, his nap cut very short by the nightmare, and to make it into a trance he was going to need quiet and darkness. He slid the window shut, cutting off the noise from outside, and closed the shutters as he did, blocking as much light as he could. He immediately regretted not lighting at least one candle first, but managed without too much fumbling to light the candle and set up the incense.

He wished he had hot water, but he hadn’t needed it for a month and wasn’t about to venture out in the Tower proper the same day that Karofsky had left. For all Kurt knew, Karofsky had told all his friends that it was Kurt’s fault he was leaving and there were three of them waiting outside his door that instant. He poured water into a cup and then held it over his biggest candle, ineffectively trying to heat it up.

When he carefully measured the herbs into the water, it was barely lukewarm. He grimaced, and gathered his cards. The fresh paint on the Three of Cups was dry, if not up to his usual standards. He folded his deck together, moving them in his hands and getting reaccustomed to the feel of them.

His stomach roiled when he tried to pick up the teacup. After several failed attempts to bring it to his lips when his nerves failed him, he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the calming smoke from the incense that curled in the air.

He released his breath and drank the tea in a single gulp, staring at the dregs of the herbs. It was the first time he’d taken the herbs since Karofsky, and while it wasn’t unheard of for a Diviner to go months without a reading, he felt as unpracticed and nervous as he had his first time. He set the teacup down before he dropped it, and closed his eyes, letting the scent of the incense wash over him and the familiar muzzy feeling from the herbs start in his fingertips.

Kurt let himself fall deep, and the light from the candles began to blur around him. He picked up his cards, and let himself go.

There was someone at the door. Kurt surfaced, just long enough the open the lock. He was familiar and unfamiliar, and Kurt had been seeing him in dreams for months. It was Blaine, had to be Blaine, and this was supposed to happen.

This was an important person.

~*~

Blaine sat and watched as Kurt laid out the ten cards for the reading, face passive and eyes heavy-lidded.

“There’s something in your future,” he said. “Something big.” He tapped on the face a card, the Chariot. “A battle, but I can’t see...I can’t see why. The outcome of it will depend on your will, on your actions.”

He gestured to Death, at the center of the diamond, lifting the Five of Cups to show it to him. “This is a new beginning for you, where you may thrive, but your past with others is blocking you. You’re still upset about recent hurts, but there is still good here for you. Focus on that.”

Blaine looked sharply at Kurt, but he was focused on the cards. “You’re hoping for this,” he said, pointing to the Two of Cups, “companionship, the partner that you’ve been missing your entire life, and you’ll find him, I can see it, but your focus must not exclude all else.”

He nodded, and Blaine barely noticed Kurt’s choice of pronouns. “The Ten of Swords,” he announced. “Reversed. There are trouble in your future, but here, look, your ultimate outcome. The Lovers.”

Blaine sucked in a breath, but Kurt kept talking over him. “You will no longer be a child, and you will find your Diviner. You are not ready for each other yet, but you will be. Except. Here.” Kurt touched the top of the deck, and drew two cards, the Fool first, and then the Magician.

“Nothing is fixed,” he said. “There is a shroud over the future always, and there is something odd happening in the world. All of this may happen. None of it may. It’s unclear.”

Kurt folded the cards back into his deck and tilted his face up, staring at Blaine and blinking slowly. His hands were limp in his lap, and Blaine knew he didn’t have much longer before the trance took him all the way under.

He shook off his thoughts, standing up and helping an unresisting Kurt to his feet. It was a simple matter to walk him the few steps to his bed and helping him lay down. He was a Protector, after all, and he had taken care of enough Diviners in a trance that it was second nature, regardless of how long they’d known each other or what the Diviner had just whispered to him as he read from the cards.

He picked up a candle from the floor and looked around for water. He found a half empty pitcher on a small table, rinsing out the teacup before refilling it and sitting Kurt up again so he could drink. Kurt jerkily and unexpectedly raised his hand, brushing against Blaine’s like he was trying to slap it away.

He’d asked David once what it was like, being in a trance, and David had shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Mostly, it’s like you’re watching yourself from far away. You know everything that happens, but it feels like you’re helpless to change it, and you don’t really care, anyway. The readings are the same way. You could be telling the Queen that we’re about to be invaded, and it matters to you about as much as whether barley or wheat is the better crop to plant in the next year.”

He hadn’t seemed to want to talk about it any further, and Blaine hadn’t pressed him. Now, though, with Kurt suddenly stiff and shaking in his arms and trying to pull away, he wondered how scared a Diviner would have to be to for him to be anything other than passive when he was so close to slipping out the other side of his trance into sleep. He let Kurt lie back on the bed and backed off, watching in confusion as he relaxed immediately and closed his eyes.

“What just happened?” he asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one. He set the still full cup of water down on Kurt’s bedside table and stubbed out the incense, setting it and the cards beside the water pitcher. The candles he simply swept to one side after blowing out. He kept the one he needed to see by, and left the room, the lock letting him out but sealing the door behind him when Blaine quietly closed it.

There were people in the hallway waiting for him. Blaine tensed and waited for the blow that never came, and then rolled his eyes at himself. This wasn’t Wester Tower, no matter how close it had felt to it while caring for a Diviner. There wasn’t anyone here who knew about him.

He turned about, coming face to face with the people from earlier. “Rachel and Finn, right?” he asked.

The girl nodded, looking serious. “Is he okay?”

“Um, yes?” Blaine said. “He’s asleep now, he was just starting a reading when I got here. He was a little different from any Diviner I’ve worked with before, but he seemed okay.” He left out what Kurt had said in his reading.

They exchanged meaningful looks, and Blaine fidgeted a little, feeling uncomfortable. “Is something wrong?”

“Kurt’s only been on one mission before, and it went bad, no one knows what happened. Well, okay, I guess Karofsky said that he stole their fee and ran off, but I don’t think Kurt would do that, and you’re the first person to see him in like, a month,” Finn blurted. Rachel smacked his arm in admonishment.

Blaine felt his jaw sag open. “Karofsky?” he repeated, remembering the angry Protector he’d met on the road. “I think I met him earlier when he was leaving the tower. He seemed...not so nice. He was Kurt’s Protector?”

“Yes, and no one knows exactly what happened,” Rachel said. “Sue took over for Towermaster Figgins a couple of days ago, and Karofsky got called into her office at morning meal today. As far as we can tell, he was riding for the coast less than an hour later. We just got back this afternoon, and anything you can tell us about Kurt would be really helpful.”

“He seemed scared,” Blaine admitted. “When he was settling into his trance, and when I was putting him to bed. He wasn’t comfortable with me.”

“Karofsky brought him back to the Tower like he was a criminal,” Rachel informed him. “It was probably just that he was reminded of how rough Karofsky was, since he was his last Protector.”

Blaine clenched his fists at his side. “Kurt’s family name, it’s Hummel?” Finn nodded, and Blaine nodded sharply back. “Karofsky warned me about him, said that I should avoid him, that he was a liar. He’ll regret it, if we cross paths again. Anyone could see which of them is the liar.”

Finn smiled faintly at him, approvingly, and then Blaine had to turn away. Jaq had said that Kurt was like him. She hadn’t said how much like him he was, if he’d been abused by his Protector and no one had stood up for him.

The Towermaster was standing at the end of the hall, Blaine noticed suddenly, only just restraining a surprised yelp. He hadn’t heard her approach at all.

“Are you done?” she asked. “Karofsky’s been dealt with. He’ll either go to Wester Tower, where he’ll be beaten into shape, or he’ll abandon his Protector status. Either way, he won’t be in a position to mistreat a Diviner anytime soon. Now, you all leave, I need to have a chat with Porcelain. Get ready for your missions, you’re leaving tomorrow.”

“The door’s locked, he’s asleep,” Blaine started, but she was already sweeping him aside and opening the door, closing it loudly behind her. He cocked his head to the side, taken aback. “Right, Towermaster.”

“That’s Sue,” Rachel said. “You’ll get used to her. I know that people with overbearing personalities like that can be difficult, but it’s just a matter of time. Now, you come with me and Finn,” she grabbed his hand and tugged, “and we’ll get you some supplies for the trip.” She said it with a false brightness, obviously trying to hide her concern, and pasted a smile on her face.

Blaine allowed himself to be dragged along, the reading echoing in his head and distracting him.

~*~  



	2. Chapter 2

~*~

_The Magician, trapped upon his wooden throne, stared at him, two fingers pointing into the ground and his wand pointing to the heavens. His face was blurred, like all the others, and his voice was unfamiliar, the words incomprehensible._

_The Fool stood behind him, barefooted with the callowness of youth, voice blending with the Magician’s and washing away._

_Their voices grew more urgent, more forceful, and then-_

Kurt awoke, panting, and swiped a clumsy hand across his face, slick with tears. That was one of his least favourite of his recurring visions, not that any of them were pleasant. Every time, he woke up with a headache, and this one was amplified by the after effects of the trance herbs he’d taken. His room was dimly lit by the window to the nearly dark outside, and he thought back, trying to remember if Blaine had opened the shutters before he left.

Blaine. He had been- the reading had been unsettling for him, now that Kurt could process the grimaces he had been making as Kurt spoke, but Blaine had acted like a Protector anyway. Maybe, maybe-

“What did you see?”

Kurt pressed himself against the wall instinctively before he realized it was Sue and relaxed. He spared a thought for the irony that the presence of _Sue Sylvester_ made him feel safe, but it had been so long since he had been comfortable that he chose not to question it.

“Yes, I know, I lied about the whole “you coming to me thing”, but I will come over there and inspect your throat myself if you don’t start talking, Porcelain. I’ve been sitting here for hours waiting for you to come out of it, so I’m not really feeling as patient as usual, and I know you just did a reading for Short, Dark and Funny-Looking, which generally requires a voice. What did you see?”

Kurt opened his mouth to talk, and wanted to slap himself when all that emerged from his throat was a croak. He remembered talking while in a trance, he knew that he had, it shouldn’t be so difficult. He cleared his throat and tried again. “The Magician, this time, and The Fool. They were speaking, but I couldn’t understand them.”

Sue nodded. “Are we talking about hallucinations or prophecies? You’re not a child, Porcelain. A trained Diviner should be better than this.”

Kurt took a moment to gather his thoughts before answering, forcing his hands down to grip his thighs when he realized he was rubbing them nervously. “They’re prophetic, they’ve been going on too long and too consistently to be hallucinations, but I don’t know what they mean. I tried to do a reading this afternoon, but Blaine interrupted.”

“Of course he did,” she said, and Kurt could _hear_ the eye roll in her voice. “Anything threatening?”

Kurt shrugged. “Maybe. One of the other dreams features the Tower Struck By Lightning, among various other nasty omens. I think Blaine might be my Protector, as well.” He said it quickly, hoping that if he got it out fast enough she would leave and he could go back to sleep.

“Well, that’s a match made in annoyingly earnest heaven. You leave tomorrow morning, heading south to Morrane for a crop reading. It’s the longest trip I had. This is me being considerate and getting you out of the Tower until the gossip about Karofsky dies down, Porcelain, I suggest that you don’t do anything foolish to make me regret it. Remember, you get killed, and _I_ look bad.”

Kurt nodded obediently. The threat was familiar, and he knew that it was as close as she’d come to wishing him or anyone else a safe mission. He slumped back down on his bed, blinking heavily and trying to force himself to stay awake.

“Your “brother” and his Diviner are here, by the way.” Sue shot it over her shoulder as she left, leaving Kurt wide-awake and scrambling as soon as he reached comprehension. Finn and Rachel could _not_ be here, not right now. He hurriedly changed his clothes and combed his hair, trying to look as presentable as possible. They couldn’t know, because then his dad would know and he would be so disappointed, and Kurt couldn’t disappoint him.

He stopped at his door. It was almost certain that they knew already, at least as much as anyone else did, and Kurt realized with sudden horror that he had no idea what Karofsky had been saying about him for the last month. He let his hand drop off of the doorknob, and tipped his head forward against the door.

“You _are_ a coward, aren’t you,” he muttered venomously. “You’re afraid to leave your room because of what people will say about you? Pathetic.” This wasn’t him, not even close. He knew exactly what the tipping point had been, when he stopped being Kurt and starting being a sad little Diviner who was afraid of people, but it didn’t make him feel less scornful.

He pulled the door open in a flash of anger-fuelled bravery, stepping into the hallway while there were still people awake in the Tower for the first time in a month. It was deserted, and he wasn’t sure if he should be pleased about that or not. It meant that Finn and Rachel were going to be that much harder to find. Or avoid. He hadn’t quite decided what he would do yet.

He straightened his shoulders and stiffened his spine, putting on his best “mess with me and regret it” face. It hadn’t really stopped many people in the past, well, it hadn’t really stopped anyone at all, but maybe people would think he’d had something to do with Karofsky getting sent away and think twice now.

Kurt walked down the hall, deliberately holding his pace slow. A much younger Protector passed by him, openly staring with a shocked expression as she rushed past. _That’s a really good sign,_ Kurt thought wryly.

He saw Finn in the entrance hall, heading outside, with two shorter figures beside him and a bag slung over his shoulder. One was unmistakeably Rachel, and the other was probably Blaine. He looked around, and was reminded of why it had been so easy to lock himself up for a month. He didn’t really know anyone left in the Tower. Names and faces, sure, but there was no one who was going to want to see him.

He sighed in resignation and headed after them, emerging into the dusk. A late evening hush had fallen over the courtyard, and Finn was just visible as he disappeared into the stables.

He scurried across the cobblestones after them, following the sound of Rachel’s voice. “I found your things, Blaine!” she announced. “I think. Are they supposed to smell like this?”

“Um, the ship was really smelly, and it kind of got into everything. Sorry,” a boy said, and that must be Blaine, and Kurt had wondered what he sounded like. “Does Kurt have a horse?”

“Um, yeah, somewhere,” Finn replied. “Or there’ll be one he can take, anyway.”

Kurt turned the corner to see Blaine leaned over his tack and Rachel dragging a bag out of a corner. Finn saw him first, and wasted no time in rushing over to grab his arms. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Kurt said, detaching Finn’s hands from his biceps. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you serious?” Rachel asked disbelievingly. “We heard Karofsky dragged you back here in chains, and that you tried to run off with the fee for the reading.”

“Neither of those things happened,” Kurt said. “It’s just gossip.” It was only partly a lie. Karofsky had tied his hands together, not chained him up, and Kurt certainly hadn’t tried to steal the Tower’s fee. “It’s taken care of anyway, Karofsky’s gone, problem solved. My dad doesn’t have to know, Finn, and if he does find out I’ll assume it was you and I will make you sorry.”

“Kurt,” Finn started, and he was looking at him with those big dumb sad eyes, making him feel guilty, and he was doing it on purpose, that _jerk_.

“Okay, fine, I won’t. It’s just that my dad doesn’t need the stress of this. It’s dealt with; can we just let it go?” Kurt pointedly didn’t inject a note of begging into his voice, he still had some pride, but Finn sagged in defeat anyway. He could do big sad eyes, too, and he’d had a lot more practice.

“Maybe I wasn’t going to tell Burt,” Finn said. “Maybe you’re overreacting.”

Kurt cocked an eyebrow. Finn was on losing ground and he knew it. Their parents hadn’t been married long, but Kurt had known Finn for a long time, and he was old hat at winning arguments with him. Finn had already been planning a note to Dad, he could see it in his eyes.

Rachel cleared her throat. “Well, I think we can agree that it’s not necessary to spread that incident around any further than it already has been, so let’s change the subject,” she said. “Kurt, Finn and I helped Blaine put together supplies for your trip, since we didn’t know when you’d be up, and we showed him around the Tower.”

She gestured to the bag that he’d seen over Finn’s shoulder, and he was suddenly able to smile genuinely at them. The two of them had been, and frequently still were, over-dramatic and annoying, and that was coming from _him_ , but they could also be very considerate, sometimes when it was least expected.

“Thank you,” he said. Finn opened his arms, expecting a hug, and Kurt submitted to it gracefully. Rachel wrapped her arms around both of them, or sort of did. She was a little too small to actually do it.

Finn let go eventually, and Kurt stepped back. Blaine was standing off to the side, looking slightly awkward, and Kurt smiled at him, feeling lighter than he had since Towermaster Figgins had called him into his office to say he was being sent out with Karofsky. “Hi,” he said, conscious of the fact that their first meeting had been a little atypical.

“Hi,” Blaine said, smiling back, all hints of self-consciousness gone. “Sorry about earlier, I thought you were in trouble.”

“It’s fine,” Kurt said, waving his hand dismissively. “The reading I was going to do isn’t that important, and I’m glad we met earlier rather than later.” Okay, so the reading was kind of really important, probably, but he could do it at any time. Not tonight, he still felt faintly sick from the after effects of the herbs, but he could. Blaine wasn’t Karofsky. No other Protector was like Karofsky.

They fell into an awkward silence, marked by Finn scuffing his foot along the ground. Oddly enough, it was Rachel who rescued them. “Blaine, you must be tired,” she said. “I’m sure Finn would love to show you where you can sleep tonight.” She smiled winningly at Finn, and he shrugged.

“Yeah, okay. C’mon, Blaine,” he said, shooting what Kurt thought was supposed to be a meaningful glance at Rachel as he left.

“Bye guys!” Blaine said brightly. Kurt turned to watch him go, and Blaine smiled at him, bigger than Kurt expected after the conversation they’d had. Maybe he really was that earnest, or that desperate. Maybe he was just a really good actor.

Blaine was concerned about the reading, and presumably about Karofsky. He had to be, but maybe he wanted to be friends too. Kurt smiled at him, and it was easy to be genuine.

Rachel grabbing his hand shook him out of it. “Are you okay?” she asked. “We met Mercedes with Quinn and Sam, and that was weird all by itself, but she was worried about you. She said that you were supposed to go out with her for your first time, but Figgins assigned you to Karofsky.”

“That’s what happened,” Kurt said. “And then Karofsky scared me, and I ran off, and he dragged me back, and I’d really rather not talk about this anymore, Rachel. It’s done, Blaine is trustworthy, and I’ll be fine.”

Rachel still looked dubious, so he hugged her, hoping to shock her out of further questions by displaying affection. “Thank you for being worried, but it wasn’t that bad. I stayed in my room because I didn’t have anything better to do, that’s all. No Karofsky was just a bonus.” _Liar, liar, liar, you coward._ Kurt patted her on the back. “I’ll head out with Blaine tomorrow, and it’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

Rachel furrowed her brow. “I’m not worried about Blaine, Kurt. It seems like you are, though. Did something happen?”

_Well, I did a reading for him, and apparently his life has been almost as miserable as mine, but in different ways, and I think that I’m going to end up bound to him and it’s a little scary, if I’m being honest, because the last Protector I was with locked himself in a room with me while I was in a trance and lay down on top of me and then he-_

“No,” he said aloud. “No, nothing happened. It’s just, I did that reading, and I’m still a little strung out from it. Blaine’s fine.”

He walked past Rachel, heading to the tack room. He wasn’t sure where his gear would be, since he hadn’t actually been the one to store it when Karofsky had dragged him back. His bags had made it back to his room though, which was a good sign that his saddle and bridle would be there.

It turned out they were there, clean and intact, and Kurt was grateful for the stablehands. He hadn’t been looking forward to scrubbing month old dirt off of leather. He could have, obviously, he was Kurt Hummel and could get mud out of anything, he just didn’t want to.

“Are you and Finn leaving soon?” Kurt asked, hoping that Rachel would latch onto the change of subject.

“We’re heading north tomorrow,” Rachel said. “We’ve been assigned to our duty rotation with the Queen and King.” She sighed. “I thought we’d be more free than this. They always say that once a Diviner and Protector find each other, they answer only to each other, but we’re still taking orders from the Tower. I wonder if it ever ends.”

“I think you’ve read too many romance novels, Rachel,” Kurt said, pointedly ignoring the fact that he’d read all the same ones. “We answer to the Tower, and to the monarchs, not just each other.” And it was a good thing they did, because Karofsky had needed stopping, and Kurt clearly hadn’t been cut out for it. The trope of only serving one’s partner wore thin quickly when confronted with an example of why it couldn’t work.

He led the way out of the tack room and walked along the stalls. “Have you seen Brownie yet?”

She shook her head at him reprovingly. “Brownie is a terrible name for a horse, Kurt. And no, we got in here just before you did.”

“ _I_ didn’t name her,” Kurt protested. “I can’t change her name, she answers to it, Rachel. It’d be mean.” Most of the stalls were empty, now that Kurt was actually looking. “Good, it looks like they let her out to pasture. I swear, sometimes I think the stablehands are the most competent people in the Tower.” Rachel made an indignant noise, and he quickly added, “Besides me and you, that is. That goes without saying.”

“And Finn?” she asked expectantly.

Kurt bit his lip and shook his head, feigning sadness. “Sorry Rachel, not Finn. The stablehands _are_ better than him.”

Rachel pouted, and just for a second Kurt thought she was going to storm out, but then he noticed the playful glimmer in her eye. “Finn won’t be pleased to hear that.”

“I’m sure it’ll inspire him on to ever greater heights,” Kurt said airily. “We all need a target to beat.”

Rachel snorted quietly, trying to contain a giggle. “I’ve missed you,” she said suddenly.

“Well, you know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.” He linked an arm in hers, steering her back toward the doors. “I missed you, too,” he admitted, because he really _had_ been excruciatingly lonely. “Would you care to accompany me while I go and find out if I still have a horse?” he asked with exaggerated good manners, pulling a halter and lead off a nail by the door.

“Why, sir, how forward!” Rachel said, pulling him out into the evening light. “My Protector will surely wonder at this behaviour!” She ruined her shocked response by laughing, and Kurt allowed himself to be pulled out toward the horse pastures, an unforced smile on his face.

~*~

Finn opened a door and checked inside. “Ha! I knew this one would be empty!” he announced cheerfully. “You can stay here, Blaine.”

Blaine looked down the hallway, nonplussed. “It’s right next to Kurt’s,” he observed. “Why’d we have to go through half the Tower, if we could’ve just come back up here?”

“I was stalling,” Finn said honestly. “Rachel wanted to talk to Kurt. And plus, now we’re bros.”

“We are?” Blaine said. “I think I missed that happening.”

“No, see, you listened while I told you all about how Rachel and I got together despite the fact that I thought I was going to be Quinn’s Protector because she’s super hot and good at divining-”

“But then Quinn got together with Sam and Mercedes, right, and it turned out that they were meant to be,” Blaine said. “All I had to do was listen and now we’re bros?”

“Well, and you told that story about how you beat up two guys bigger than you with a practice sword, and I guess it’s not that surprising that they were bigger than you, because you’re kind of short for a dude, but it’s still kind of awesome.” He offered his fist. “Bros?”

Blaine bumped it. “Bros.” A warm little fluttering started up on his chest. Sure, Finn was kind of dim, but Blaine couldn’t remember the last time someone had accepted him so quickly. After the truth about his preferences had come out, there hadn’t really been a bunch of people lining up to be his friend.

“Cool!” Finn said, clapping him on the back. “Rachel’s probably done with Kurt, I should go find her. See you tomorrow!” He headed off down the hallway, a bounce in his step.

Blaine opened the door, finding a simple bed and little else. Kurt’s room was far nicer, but then, he’d likely had years to furnish it. There was a wash basin, though there was no water in the pitcher beside it. Blaine dropped his bag on the floor and stripped off his traveling boots and tunic, wiggling his toes in relief.

A quiet knock at the door caught his attention, and he nearly knocked himself over jumping up to answer. Kurt stood there, still fully dressed and looking apprehensive.

“Do you need anything?” he asked without preamble. “I know that Finn and Rachel showed you around, but you must have had a long day already without having to navigate an unfamiliar place. I could get you something from the kitchens, or some water, or...” he trailed off, looking at Blaine expectantly.

“Thanks, Kurt, but I’m fine, really,” Blaine said. “Finn showed me where the well is, so I’ll go get some water, and we ate while you were asleep, or busy with the Towermaster, whichever you were doing.”

“Did Finn really leave you in _here_?” Kurt asked suddenly, peering over his shoulder into the room, still dimly lit by the setting sun. “Why would he do that? This isn’t a nice room.”

“It’s nice enough,” Blaine protested. “And it’s right next to you, so that’s convenient. I’m still used to the ship I took from Wester, this room is like the royal chambers in comparison.”

Kurt still looked dubious, and brushed past him, picking up the water pitcher and clicking his tongue disapprovingly when it was empty. “We’re being terrible hosts, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll get you some candles and some water, it’s going to be dark soon and I’m sure you’d like to be able to see.”

Blaine opened his mouth to protest, but Kurt overrode him. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, disappearing back out the door. “You can just, um, make yourself comfortable.”

He shut his mouth with a snap that was swallowed up in the sound of the door closing. It was late, the sun now long gone. They were just past the Solstice and the days were long, but he had set out early from the inn and he was exhausted. Kurt could bring all the candles and water he wanted, Blaine was going to be lucky to stay awake until he got back.

He sat down on the bed, straightening his back like he’d learned in childhood, when falling asleep at court meant a tongue lashing from his mother, if he was lucky. Kurt was fast though, and the quiet knock came again before Blaine gave into the urge to lie down.

Kurt handed him the water and a lit candle. “There’s that, and I’m sure you’re tired. I’ll leave you alone now to get some sleep.”

He stepped back like he was going to close the door, and Blaine knew that he had to clear the air now or he’d never be able to say it. “Wait, Kurt, hang on,” Blaine said quickly. “About Karofsky...”

Kurt stiffened, his face locking into a grimace. “Yes?”

“Um, I met him,” Blaine said, and why was he bringing this up, why had he thought this needed to be said, what was wrong with him, “and he said some things, and Finn and Rachel said some other things, but you were there for that, so I guess you know, and I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, and that I’m not judging you by that.”

Kurt stared at him, his face not changing. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then he closed Blaine’s door in his face. Possibly he should have gone with not mentioning it at all.

Yeah, he probably should’ve left it.

~*~

Kurt knocked on his door early the next morning. Blaine rolled out of the bed, groggily wondering when exactly Kurt slept. They’d parted near midnight, and it looked like the sun had barely risen. He pulled on pants, still clumsy with sleep, and stumbled over to the door.

“Good morning!” Kurt said cheerfully as the door opened. Okay. Kurt was pretending that Blaine hadn’t said anything stupid. He could do that, too. “I brought you...” he trailed off when Blaine opened the door fully, suddenly flushing faintly red and fixing his eyes on Blaine’s face.

Oh no, no, no, _no_. This was not happening. Blaine hid his lower body behind the door and checked his pants discreetly. Okay. It wasn’t happening. He was safely tucked away.

It occurred to him that maybe he should have found a shirt, as well, but it was too late for that. “Good morning!” he returned, matching Kurt’s original cheeriness and adding his best charming smile. He was good at charming.

Kurt was carrying a tray and was already dressed like he was about to embark on a long trip. Which they were, obviously, but Blaine hadn’t expected him to show up ready to go as soon as Blaine was awake. “Um, you’ve been up for a while?”

“Not long,” Kurt said stiffly, still uncomfortable. He held the tray out. “I brought you breakfast, I thought you’d want to be on the road as soon as possible.”

“How early is it?” Blaine asked, crossing to the window. It faced west, making it hard to judge exactly, but it looked as though it were just past sunrise, and at this time of year that was really, really early. He realized that he’d left Kurt holding the tray out, and twirled to rush back, only to smack into Kurt, who’d entered the room silently behind him. “Sorry! Sorry!” he said as he steadied Kurt and took the tray before it could crash to the floor.

Kurt stepped back quickly. “I’m just going to go,” he said. “I’ll get your horse from the stables and meet you in the courtyard when you’re ready. Take your time.”

He was gone before Blaine could formulate a response, closing the door behind him. At least it was gentler than it had been the night before.

“Well, that went well, Blaine,” he said sarcastically. “So much for charm.”

~*~

Kurt rushed down the steps to the ground floor of the Tower, his saddlebags bouncing on his shoulder. He was not embarrassed. He was Kurt Hummel, and he was full of grace.

Just not when he’d been up all night and was in the same room as a half-naked boy at the crack of dawn, apparently. He felt the heat rising in his cheeks again. At the very least, the sight of Blaine’s shirtless body had driven the incessant _What did Karofsky tell him? What does he know? Why doesn’t he care?_ from his head, and oh, there it was back again. Wonderful.

At least he had confirmation that he still liked boys- and that was a dangerous road to go down so he was stopping immediately. He couldn’t run from Blaine forever. Sooner or later, he was going to have to face him for longer than five minutes and he was _not_ doing it with an obvious crush. This was the boy who had been in so many of his visions, whose reading had been so painfully obvious that Kurt was surprised that he hadn’t asked if Kurt was going to be his Diviner. He couldn’t afford to screw it up.

 _Blaine would care about_ that _if he knew, though, how could he not? He’s a Protector. There’s no way he knows_.

The same thoughts had been buzzing through his mind all night, and Kurt was both exhausted and infuriated. Arguing with yourself tended to be a fruitless endeavour, even if he was the only person with enough intelligence to keep up when he got going. He supposed he could ask Blaine what Karofsky had told him, but then he’d be opening himself up to more questions.

The Tower doors were closed, and Kurt went out the small side entrance instead. The kitchen workers were awake this time of day, but very few others were. He just couldn’t stay in his room any longer. The walls that had been so protective were suddenly a prison, and he hadn’t been able to handle being alone with his thoughts any longer. When the first light of dawn had appeared, he had been up and out of bed, gathering what he needed for the trip and washing.

Finn and Rachel wouldn’t be up yet. Well, Finn at least wouldn’t be, and Rachel would be going through her lengthy morning routine. Kurt wished that he didn’t know the ins and outs of when Rachel got up and what she did, but Finn had thought that it was something worth complaining about when they had first started to stay together.

They would be mad that Kurt had left without seeing them again, but it had been hard to leave his room yesterday when he’d known that nearly everyone in the Tower would be awake. This was easier, in ways he didn’t really care to examine. Besides, with their collective attention span, they would have forgotten all about it by the time he saw them again.

He kept his eyes straight ahead when he passed a stablehand, heading for the stalls where their horses were. Brownie eyed him grumpily from the stall. Apparently horses didn’t appreciate being brought in from pasture and locked up, but Kurt figured that she would get over it. He continued past them to the tack room, slinging Brownie’s bridle over his shoulder and gathering up her saddle and blanket.

Brownie stood easily as he saddled her, cinching the girth around her and tying on his saddlebags. He stepped out of the stall, where the same stablehand was standing with Blaine’s fully tacked horse behind him.

“Here, dude,” he said. “I remembered that you would need this horse too, probably, so I got him ready for you.” A slight breeze came through the open door of the stable, bringing with it the scent of stale sweat and burned trance herbs off of the stablehand. Kurt resisted the urge to shudder.

“Thank you, um, Brett, right?” he tried. The stablehand nodded. “That was really considerate. I have to go upwind now, but I hope you have a nice day.”

He led Brownie out of the stall and accepted Blaine’s horse’s reins from Brett. In a brilliant display of self-control, Kurt didn’t wrinkle his nose until he was nearly out the door and into fresher air.

~*~

Blaine raced through cleaning himself up and getting dressed for travel. Kurt may have said he could take his time, but Blaine didn’t want to keep him waiting too long. He was stuffing his feet into his boots and eating a fruit roll as quickly as he could when he saw the card on the floor. It was painted in the same style as Kurt’s had been, and he picked it up curiously.

The Magician stared solemnly up at him, and Blaine frowned in response. The cards by themselves meant very little. They were merely a channel for the Diviner to use and could mean good or bad things depending on the context. It was still kind of disconcerting to find what could be an ill omen on his bedroom floor, but Blaine had lived in a Tower long enough to not be too panicked.

He placed the card on the bedside table and continued getting ready, lacing up his boots and then tying up his bags. He picked up the card last and left the room.

Blaine walked down the stairs, pointedly ignoring the card in his hand. He would give it back to Kurt, and hopefully it meant nothing. Kurt dropping a card despite the fact that it was supposed to be in a sealed pouch wasn’t necessarily an omen.

He exited the Tower proper into the dim sunlight and blinked to clear his vision. Kurt was standing in the courtyard, looking up into the sky and holding the reins of both the gelding Blaine had bought the day before and another horse, a light brown one that was probably his own.

“Kurt?” he called quietly. Kurt started and tensed up briefly. By the time he’d turned around to face Blaine though, his face was perfectly neutral. Blaine felt a small spark of discomfort start. He knew that Kurt had had a rough time with his former Protector, and he was starting to wonder if Kurt actually wanted to leave the Tower with him or was just really good at faking it.

Kurt smiled before Blaine could really start feeling self-conscious. “Good, you’re here,” he said, glancing up at the Tower. “Let’s go.”

Blaine held out the card facedown. “I found this on the floor of my room,” he said casually. “I think you dropped it?”

Kurt accepted the card and flipped it over. A jumble of expressions flashed across his face, leaving a concerned twist of his lips in its wake. “It’s mine,” he said, untying his pouch and slipping it in. “It must have fallen out when I came into your room earlier. Thank you for finding it.”

“Do you think it’s an omen?” Blaine asked when Kurt turned to mount his horse.

“Probably,” Kurt said, sounding faintly frustrated. “There have been a lot of them recently. I just have no idea what they’re trying to say.” He swung himself gracefully up into the saddle and looked down at Blaine expectantly.

Blaine hurried to tie on his saddlebags and mount his own horse, biting his lip so he wouldn’t ask a stupid question again. Kurt led the way to the gates, and they swung open slowly as the guards worked the winch.

“Have you done a reading on them?” Blaine asked as they rode through, craning his neck around to see if anyone had noticed they were leaving and come to say goodbye. The Towermaster’s cool stare from the Tower doors met his, and she beckoned him back. “Kurt?”

“No, I haven’t, but I will, okay? Don’t worry.” Kurt sounded distracted, still looking out along the road.

“No, your Towermaster wants us to come back.”

Kurt twisted in the saddle and slumped slightly in resignation as he turned his horse’s head about. Blaine followed behind him as they rode across the courtyard, and Kurt slid out of the saddle in front of the Towermaster. “Is there something?”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Porcelain,” the Towermaster snapped. “I got a report that you were making a sad attempt at leaving unnoticed and had to interrupt my morning talk with my sister to catch you, so I suggest you listen closely because I will not be repeating myself.”

Blaine dismounted as well, holding his reins and listening quietly. “I supervised a reading last night, and there’s some sort of unrest coming. Take your sweet time heading down south and avoid the main roads. I don’t want to have to deal with any drama involving you while I have what could be civil war on my hands.”

Kurt nodded in acknowledgement. The Towermaster glanced at Blaine, and then returned her attention to him. “Do a reading on the most recent of the dreams you’ve been having, and send me a message with the important parts. That means that I don’t want to hear about your love life, Porcelain, so restrain yourself.”

“Okay,” Kurt said impatiently, glancing up at the Tower like he was expecting someone to be looking down at them. “Can we go now, Sue?”

“Fine by me,” the Towermaster said. “I suggest you move quickly, because I’m sure I saw Berry roaming the halls earlier, and you seem to want to leave unnoticed.”

Kurt was already back on his horse before she had finished speaking, and Blaine mounted as well. Kurt gave a short bow and said, “Thank you for this.”

“Don’t get yourself killed,” she said, tossing it over her shoulder as she went back into the Tower. Blaine stared after her, slightly shocked, until he realized that Kurt had brought his horse about again and was leaving him behind.

They rode in a silence that quickly became awkward, and Blaine hummed a tune quietly to distract himself as the Tower disappeared into the distance.

“What song is that?” Kurt asked eventually. “It’s nice.”

“I don’t know,” Blaine admitted. “I met a mage once while I was on a mission, and she liked to sing. The tune got stuck in my head, but I can’t actually remember any of the words.”

“Do you sing?” Kurt asked curiously. “Before I came to the Tower, I used to think that I would be a performer.”

“I sing occasionally,” Blaine said. “I had some voice training before my mother realized that I liked it more than was proper.”

Kurt looked at him oddly. “Proper?” he asked. “Are you a noble?”

“The second child of Lord and Lady Anderson of Wester,” Blaine said, adding an overdone bow that nearly toppled him from his horse, but did get a tiny smile onto Kurt’s face. “Who are your parents?”

Kurt shrugged. “My mother passed before I entered the Tower, and my father is mayor of a town east of here, formerly a blacksmith.”

“Oh,” Blaine said. “I was Protector to a boy whose mother was a blacksmith once,” he added. “She mainly traded in weapons, but his horse threw a shoe once and he was able to fix it enough to get us back to civilization. It’s a lot more useful than knowing how to play the lute.”

“I didn’t help my dad much,” Kurt said uncomfortably. “I helped with fetching and carrying, but I was quite young when I started having visions that got sort of...violent, and he had to send me to the Tower early. He visited me every week before his responsibilities started to keep him away, but I didn’t learn much smithing from him.”

“I wasn’t young,” Blaine said. Kurt had been honest, and the least he could do was return the favour. “I was fourteen. It was just after my father figured out why I never seemed to be chasing after girls. I had the Talent, but nobles in Wester aren’t required to enter the Tower if we have other obligations, and I was the second heir. My parents found out, my mother mysteriously and coincidentally fell pregnant, and by the next week I was at the Tower.”

Kurt was silent for a long stretch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s truly awful.”

“I was meant to be a Protector,” Blaine said. “Wester Tower was more home to me than court ever was, even when the gossip about why I was sent late reached there. At the same time...”

 “To have your family reject you, that had to have been hard,” Kurt said. “I remember being afraid of what would happen before I told my dad about me.”

Blaine looked at him, and blinked a few times. He’d suspected, but the confirmation shocked him into silence. When Kurt looked back at him, a confused expression on his face, Blaine realized that he must have been staring. “I just realized that I have never spoken to another person who was like me in the way you are,” he said in a rush. “It’s nice.”

“I’ve known girls like that,” Kurt said. “But they were all quiet about it until suddenly one day they announced a permanent partnership and took off. The Tower was really nasty for a while after Brittany and Santana, but fortunately they weren’t there for it. And I wasn’t there for it either when Quinn, Mercedes and Sam left.”

“Three people?” Blaine said, taken aback. “How did they do that?”

“I don’t know,” Kurt said. “I didn’t see it coming at all. Mercedes left me a letter, and they announced that they were permanent and left the same day while I was...away.” He turned away, but Blaine caught a glimpse of a sad pout. “She’s my best friend, and she didn’t tell me until she was gone.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you,” Blaine said.

“No, of course not, I know that. And I’ve had plenty of time to reflect recently, and there were quite a few incidents where I hurt her too. I just wish she’d-” Kurt stopped abruptly, and smiled tightly at Blaine. “I’d rather not talk about this anymore. Do you know ‘Carousel of Cups’?”

It took Blaine a moment to catch up, but he smiled when he did. “Yes, I love that song.”

“Sing it with me?”

~*~

The expression on Blaine’s face when he had reached up for the high note rather than down for the low note at the end of the song was gratifying. Kurt could admit it to himself. He’d missed singing too, especially with someone else. He was smiling at Blaine broadly at the end of it, and Blaine was smiling back.

“That was amazing,” Blaine said. “I was not expecting you to have that voice, seriously, Kurt. Wow.”

“ _You_ were amazing,” Kurt replied, puffing a little at the praise. “You have a great voice.” He grabbed onto the pommel of his saddle to steady himself. He was _not_ swooning. It was just hot out, and yes, a boy had sung with him, and he was beautiful, but Kurt was not swooning.

Okay, maybe he was swooning a little, but it was nice. It was easily and unequivocally nice to ride beside Blaine, to talk to someone who truly understood some of what it was like to be Kurt, to sing with someone without worrying about what it would do to their reputation.

He was out of the Tower, away from retribution from Karofsky’s terrible friends, and Karofsky himself was far away by now, and he was safe. The cynical part of him wondered how long it would last, but the biggest part of him was smiling at Blaine and planning an interrogation to get more details about his musical background.

“So, the lute,” he started. “You play it?”

“Sort of,” Blaine said. “I’m not very good. I kind of stopped practicing when I had to start focusing on swordplay at the Tower. You?”

“No,” Kurt said. “I sing, but music wasn’t really high up in our priorities. There was a group of us at the Tower though, we would sing together. It was pretty much the only thing we all had in common.” He was hit with a tiny pang of melancholy when he thought about saying goodbye to them, one or two at a time. Or not saying goodbye, in some cases.

“Yeah, Finn told me some stuff about that. He said it made us ‘bros’,” Blaine said with a grin on his face.

Kurt rolled his eyes, and Blaine’s grin got even wider, like he’d been expecting that reaction. “Of course he did. Finn would be bros with his horse if he could. Actually, I’m pretty sure he _is_ bros with his horse.”

“How does that work? He tells his horse his deepest secrets and the horse holds them in confidence for him? Maybe I should-”

Blaine cut himself off and pulled his horse down to a stop, gesturing for Kurt to do the same. “What’s that?” he said curiously, pointing at a piece of crumpled parchment on the side of the road that had been blocked from Kurt’s view before. “A letter?” He dismounted and picked it up, handing it to Kurt.

He turned it over in his hands, straightening it out. “Well, that’s our Towermaster’s seal,” he said, running a finger over the wax that held the parchment shut. Or had. The seal peeled off easily. “It’s been opened and read already,” he said as he unfolded it, “and it’s addressed to the Towermaster of Wester Tower.”

Blaine jerked. “What?”

“That’s what it says. I don’t- did she send this with Karofsky? Why would anyone ditch it so obviously? We’re barely an hour out from the Tower.” Kurt ran his eyes down the page and felt his blood run cold. “She must have sent this with Karofsky.”

“Why do you say that?” Blaine stood on tiptoes to try to see it, and Kurt handed it down rather than dismount. He wasn’t sure if his knees would support him.

“Because it’s about him, and how he has a history of physical abuse leveled towards Diviners. Sue said that she sent it with a different messenger though, and I know she did.” His voice sounded faraway, and he was beginning to feel faintly lightheaded.

Blaine skimmed the letter. “It’s certainly very...honest. ‘He has some violent tendencies, which should be curbed before he is trusted with the well-being of a Diviner’. How could your Towermaster justify sending someone like _this_ ,” he shook the paper, “on a trade that’s supposed to foster goodwill between kingdoms?”

“I don’t think she believes in goodwill,” Kurt said, tamping down the edges of an odd amusement. “I checked the mission logs last night after I left your room. She did send someone who isn’t Karofsky with a letter to your Towermaster. Maybe she actually meant this copy for him to read?” He spied the writing on the back of the page. “There, see? Turn it over,” he ordered.

 _David Karofsky_ , the paper read. _Open after you have left the Tower, and continue on your mission. A copy has been sent to Wester_.

“Your Towermaster is kind of mean and awesome, Kurt,” Blaine said simply.

Kurt stifled a hysterical giggle. “He never would have gone to Wester knowing that this was going in front of him. He’ll have left the Tower, Blaine. She wrote a letter perfectly formed to have him abandon his duties. I’m never going to see him again.” A short, relieved laugh forced its way out, and then another and another until they began to sound more like sobs. He doubled over in the saddle, covering his mouth to muffle himself and squeezing his eyes tightly shut as they began to burn with tears.

Brownie stood still and placid beneath him, like she was used to him crying while he was on her back, and by now she probably was. He concentrated on breathing, waiting until it sounded almost normal to remove his hand from his mouth and swipe at his eyes.

When he was finally calm, he opened his eyes to see Blaine looking up at him, concern in his eyes. He stared back, aware that his face had to be red and blotchy, and searched for something, anything, to say.

“What did he tell you?” was what came out, and great, this was a really good place to have this conversation that he honestly never wanted to have ever, he really should’ve learned to control his mouth at some point.

“Karofsky?” Blaine said. Kurt nodded slightly, and Blaine put a hand on his knee. “He said that you were a liar and I should stay away from you, and that you weren’t a very good Diviner.”

Kurt’s breath whooshed out of his chest in surprise. “That’s it?” he asked incredulously. He’d been up all night obsessing over it, and that was _it_?

“That’s it,” Blaine confirmed. “I met him past here, so he must have read this.” He wiggled the letter and shrugged. “Also, he asked me what I’d done to deserve this.”

Kurt held himself still, resisting the urge to nudge Brownie sideways. What if Blaine had killed somebody, or- “And what did you do to deserve it?” he asked warily.

“Just being a boy who likes boys,” he said simply. “And this is an honour.” There was something conflicted in his eyes, but Blaine didn’t say anything else, just patted his knee and smiled at him as he turned away to remount his horse.

Kurt rode slightly behind him when they set off, looking at Blaine contemplatively. It took him a couple of minutes, but he eventually realized that he was smiling, just a little.

~*~

Blaine wasn’t angry about being sent away. He had been, but it had been short-lasting. The familiar sting of abandonment was stronger, and the hurt had a much longer life.

He didn’t even miss Wester Tower very much. He missed David, and Jaq, and he’d been mostly accepted by his agemates eventually, but he didn’t have many strong bonds to the place itself, or to most of the people.

Jaq had told him that being sent away was an honour, but he didn’t see how it was if Farhold’s answer to him was Karofsky. Both Towers had sent a problem away, in the hopes that distance would solve it. And it had, apparently. Karofsky had abandoned the Tower, and Blaine was far enough away that people could forget about him.

He failed to see the privilege in being compared to someone who had beat his Diviner and lied about it.

Calling it an honour had come to his lips easily when Kurt had asked though. Because though the exchange had ended up being a thinly veiled plot to rid each Tower of a problem, it didn’t mean that Blaine couldn’t be better off. He had found a boy who could be his Diviner, and if nothing else, he had finally met a person who was different in the same way.

Kurt had been riding behind him for some time, but he slowly crept up to ride beside Blaine again. Blaine glanced at him, noticing that his face had cleared, and he no longer looked like he was on the edge of bursting into tears.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Kurt’s reaction had been a little scary, really. Blaine had kept his hands to himself, not knowing how any kind of comfort would be received, but if Kurt needed to talk it wasn’t like there was anyone else around to listen to him, and Blaine was more than willing to help.

“I’m not a very good Diviner, you know,” he said, out of the blue. “I always hear the masters talking about me. They would call me stubborn, untrainable. I’m too old to still be having dreams like I do, and the cards don’t cooperate with me the way they’re supposed to. Where someone else can get a crystal clear reading, I see a cloud, but my dreams come true. It’s frustrating.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine said helplessly. “I don’t think it’s your fault.”

He shrugged. “I know it isn’t my fault, it’s not like I’m consciously blocking myself. But Karofsky really fixated on it, I guess. It’s just...he would throw me into walls at the Tower, and he was really rough with a lot of other people too, but Towermaster Figgins loved him. I thought- I didn’t think that-” he stalled and took a deep breath. “I guess it just hit me that he’s gone and I don’t have to worry about him anymore. So to answer your question, I’m okay. As long as he’s gone, I’ll always be okay.”

“He would’ve left the Tower eventually though,” Blaine said. “When the girl he was supposed to be with found him, if she exists. I think she’s probably better off without him.”

Kurt turned away, but not before Blaine saw his face, twisted into an unhappy expression. “We should ride a little faster,” he said. “We’re almost to the fork in the road where we turn south.”

Blaine kicked his horse into a faster pace. Kurt was a confusing person.

~*~

Kurt started talking again eventually, just small things, about his friends, about his Tower, little facts about Farhold. Blaine took the conversation cues for what they were and kept it light, and they spent the day getting to know each other better.

They reached a small town just after dusk, the natural stopping point of the day. Kurt slipped inside the inn, leaving Blaine outside with the horses. He held the reins loosely, trusting them not to startle, and looked around curiously.

It was a lot like home, really. A small crowd of children had followed them to the inn curiously, and the main road was wide and dusty. A man was shaking sheets out of a second story window, and a guard patrolled nearby, her eyes sliding over Blaine appraisingly.

Kurt came out of the inn only moments after he entered. “They have all of one room left, but there’s room in the stable for the horses. It’s the season for travelers, I guess.” He looked at Blaine expectantly for a moment, but Blaine had no idea what he was asking. “Are you okay with that?” Kurt asked, his eyebrow raised.

“Oh! Sharing a room?” Blaine asked. Kurt nodded, crossing his arms. “Yeah! I mean, yes, of course, that’s fine.”

“Good, because your options were sleep with me or in the stable,” Kurt said with a quick smile. Blaine snorted with shocked laughter, and Kurt flushed crimson as he realized what he’d said. “I hope you know what I actually meant by that,” he said regally, turning and re-entering the inn.

“Are you a Protector?” a high voice behind him asked. Blaine turned around and looked down to see that the children had given up on maintaining any kind of distance while he’d been talking to Kurt, and had formed a small mob directly behind him.

“Yes, I’m a Protector,” Blaine said. “How are you?”

A few of the braver ones said “fine”, but most just stared with their eyes wide. The little girl who appeared to have elected herself their spokesperson recovered first. “We see lots of Protectors here,” she said. “Your sword is nice.”

“Thanks!” Blaine said. “It was a gift from a friend of mine when I left my other Tower, I really like it too.”

“I’m going to be a Diviner,” she informed him smugly. “My mom said I can’t go to the Tower yet though because I’m too short.”

Blaine made a show of studying her up and down, from her black hair down to her tiny, dirty feet. She was seven or eight, at the most. “That’s true,” he said seriously. “Diviners have to do lots of horseback riding, and I think you would have trouble getting on.”

She pouted. “You’re supposed to say that she’s wrong,” she said. “I would be a really good Diviner.”

“I’m sure you would be,” Blaine backtracked hastily. “You just need to wait a little while and then you can be.” The other children began to wander off, already bored, but the girl stared up at him, her brows drawing together and a stormy expression appearing on her face.

“Blaine, I’m going to need your help with the horses if you can drag yourself away from your new friends,” Kurt said behind him, sounding amused.

Blaine took the lifeline for what it was. “Sorry, duty calls!” he said quickly. “I’ll see you when you come to the Tower!” The girl was already ignoring him, watching Kurt intensely as he led his horse around to the back of the inn.

“I had a dream about you last night,” she called suddenly.

Kurt turned back, a fake and wide smile on his face. “Did you? What happened in the dream?”

“You were crying. A man was holding you down.” The girl frowned at him. “I didn’t like it. I hope it doesn’t happen.”

Kurt’s visible hand clenched at his side into a fist. “Has the Tower been to see you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not allowed to go yet. I want to, though. Can I?” The little girl beamed up at him winningly, but Kurt shook his head.

“Not now. Maybe soon, though, if you keep having dreams like that. Did you dream anything else about me?”

“No, just that. It was stupid. Anyway, that’s all if you won’t take me to the Tower. My Dad’s going to yell if I don’t get home soon.” She rushed off, feet kicking up little clouds of dust as she ran.

The reins dropped from Kurt’s loose grip. Blaine picked them up, holding both horses and waiting for Kurt to speak.

“I need to do a reading,” he said, voice thin with stress.

“You should calm down first,” Blaine said gently. “I’ll take care of the horses and bring you up hot water for your herbs, and you can go lie down for a bit, okay? You look like you need some rest.”

Kurt whirled on him suddenly. “Are you saying I look tired!?” he said in a panicked tone. “Why didn’t you tell me before? How awful is it?”

He had dark circles under his eyes, and there was a droop to his brows that made him look like he hadn’t slept well the night before, but discretion was probably more important than honesty. “You look fine,” Blaine reassured him, “just like you could use a little sleep, so why don’t you go do that and I’ll wake you up, I promise.”

Kurt shook his head. “No, that’s fine. I’ll help with the horses.” He took his horse’s reins back, gently tugging until Blaine let go. “Thank you,” he added as an afterthought.

“Why would that girl dream about you?” Blaine asked.

“She’s apparently the extremely precocious Rachel Berry in miniature,” Kurt said drily. “She was having dreams like that about total strangers at that age too.” He smirked. “The attitude was even right. I think we should send a letter to Finn and ask if they got on the wrong side of a mage or something and got Rachel turned into a child.”

“Why aren’t you more worried?” Blaine asked. “That was kind of a disturbing thing to hear from a little kid.”

“Blaine, we’re trained for a reason. That little girl had a dream vision of me crying and being held down, and the context of that could be anything. The man could’ve been a physician, for all we know, or her brain may have completely misinterpreted the message she received and presented a metaphor literally. It’s like the dreams I have. I can’t trust them, and that’s why I’m going to do a reading.”

Kurt’s tone was condescending, like he’d expected Blaine to know it already. “That explains a lot,” Blaine said, carefully keeping his tone level. “I came late to the Tower, so they didn’t teach me a few things because they wanted to get me out on missions as quickly as they could.”

“Why would they want that?” Kurt asked, condescension gone as quickly as it had come. “I’m sure you’re a wonderful Protector, Blaine, but I was in the Tower for eight years before I was sent out. And, yes, obviously I was a special case, but why wouldn’t they finish your education first?”

Blaine felt the same ugly hurt that he thought he’d dismissed two years ago make a bid for resurgence. “My parents,” he said shortly. “Always my parents.”

Kurt patted his hand awkwardly. “I’m sorry they’re terrible,” he said.

Blaine laughed, but he felt a little tug of fondness too. “You’re not very good at being comforting,” he said, walking towards the stables.

“I’m getting better,” Kurt said. “You try being comforting when you’ve never had anyone to practice on. It’s hard.”

Blaine ignored the implications of that in favour of unlatching a gate. He paused for Kurt to close it behind them before leading the way to the stable.

~*~

Kurt poured steaming water over the trance herbs in the bottom of a tea cup slowly and set them aside to pick up his deck. He leafed through them, shuffling and flipping at random. When he thought he’d waited long enough, he took the cup and his deck and sank to sit cross-legged on the floor.

“Have you ever been present for an internal reading?” he asked Blaine.

Blaine, watching him from his perch on the bed like a hawk, shook his head. “I know what to expect, but I’ve never been present for one.”

“It’s a lot like a normal reading, but I won’t be speaking aloud. I imagine it’ll be very boring for you,” Kurt said with a shrug. “When I’m done, I’ll restack the cards.”

“Okay then,” said Blaine. “I’ll be here.”

Kurt nodded decisively and picked up his cup, staring into the depths of it. The candlelight twinkled in the reflection of the liquid, and the room was oppressively hot, since they’d closed the windows to limit distractions and it was a summer evening, after all.

He took the herbs in one smooth pull, nearly scalding his tongue, and closed his eyes while he waited for it to take effect. It started the same as always, a falling sensation that felt like it should be terrifying, and Kurt forced himself to relax into it.

Something wasn’t right. Kurt was aware of a general feeling of wrongness in the same way he was aware that he had slumped forward, but mostly indifferent to both. The panic started in his gut and spread outwards like a drop of dye in water, but his limbs were only growing heavier.

Kurt reached for his cards. He needed them, why did he need them, he was supposed to do a reading but his hands weren’t cooperating. He blinked to clear his vision, and couldn’t lift his eyelids again.

The sea surged, rising up to swallow him whole, and Kurt was pulled under.

~*~


	3. Chapter 3

~*~

Blaine looked away as Kurt drank his tea, looking back to check on him. The room was dark except for candles, and a bead of sweat rolled down his face from the heat.

When he looked back to Kurt, his eyes were closed and his breath was slowing, like Blaine expected, but there was a pained grimace on his face, which Blaine had decidedly not expected.

“Kurt?” he asked, standing up. He barely had his feet underneath of him before Kurt fell forward, forehead almost hitting the ground. “Kurt!” The world went black, and then-

There was darkness all around him, but someone was holding his hand. Blaine turned his head to look, but though his muscles tensed, he was held immobile.

It was a dream. It had to be a dream, but it felt more real than anything he’d seen while he was awake. He remembered falling asleep, so it had to be a dream.

“It’s not,” Kurt said, and it must be Kurt holding his hand, because he had whispered that in his ear. “It’s not a dream. You’re having a vision, you’re just not very good at it.”

Blaine throat unlocked suddenly, and he growled a little in frustration when his mouth still only opened slightly, enough for him to choke out, “What?”

“You’re still on the bed in that room, and Kurt is on the floor. Close your eyes.” Kurt leaned in close and breathed in his ear, “I’m not Kurt. Go find him.”

He was free to move. He jerked his head to the side and met not-Kurt’s piercing stare. “Seriously, Blaine,” he said, but his lips weren’t moving. “Close your eyes.”

And then he was falling.

~*~

Kurt opened his eyes, and tried not to scream.

A familiar scene surrounded him, the Tower burning in the distance, and corpses strewn about and left where they’d fallen, the remnants of a slaughter.

This time, the faces were clear.

He was supposed to walk, that was how this vision went, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his feet. Rachel stared up at him, blood pooled beneath from the gash that ran the length of her abdomen. Finn was facedown beside her, or would be if his head was still attached to his body.

Logic fled, the detachment that was supposed to accompany visions non-existent. He couldn’t be here, this couldn’t happen, but that was Quinn, a surprised look still on her face, and Sam half-atop of her, and past them...

He stumbled over, tripping on an outstretched arm and dropping to his knees in front of her. “Mercedes,” he mumbled, touching her cold hand and recoiling. “I can’t- this can’t happen, you have to tell me why this happened, _please_ , they’re all dead.”

She didn’t move. She had moved before, grabbed his face, told him what questions to ask. “Why am I seeing this?” he asked desperately. “You said that was the question to ask, so why am I seeing this?”

There was no answer.

Kurt stayed on his knees beside Mercedes, waiting for something, anything. The vision of the battlefield had never lasted so long, and he didn’t know what to do.

“That does sound like you,” Karofsky said. “Just waiting and waiting for someone to come save you.”

He twisted around, and Karofsky stepped closer, crowding into his personal space. “You fought and you fought, and you still couldn’t stop it, so you stopped fighting. It’s going to get you into trouble someday soon, and it’s going to get your Protector killed, I can promise you that.”

Kurt leaned as far away as he could without tipping over. “You aren’t Karofsky.” He said it more for himself than for the apparition, hoping to break apart the tight ball of panic growing in his chest.

“What was your first clue? The fact that I can string a sentence together, or the fact that I have you on your knees and haven’t touched you yet?”

Kurt jerked back, and did topple over, but he landed on the blessedly hard ground, not on one of his friend’s bodies. The thing impersonating Karofsky laughed and stepped forward again. “This is going to happen if you two screw up, you know.” He waved a hand around. “They’ll all die, and it’ll be your fault.”

Kurt lashed out with his foot, and then he was alone again. The field dissolved into inky darkness around him, and Kurt stood back up shakily, pushing himself off of a ground that he couldn’t see.

~*~

He wasn’t falling anymore.

Blaine opened his eyes (but when had he closed them?) and looked up. The sky was blue and clear, the sun beating down. A Tower was burning on the horizon, and there was a field of dead bodies at his feet, twisted like they’d fallen in battle.

He clamped his mouth shut, not wanting to break the silence. He couldn’t even hear the wind, just his own breathing. He took a step, carefully avoiding treading on the corpses, and started walking, in the absence of anything better to do.

If this was a vision, he could live with never having another.

His father stood in front of him, sneering. “Look at you,” he said. “A Protector with no Diviner. You can’t stop what’s coming. Unrest, they said. They don’t know the half of it.”

Blaine swung his fist, it hadn’t been Kurt, it wasn’t his father, but he was already gone again. “Even in your own mind, you’re pathetic. What happens to you when Kurt dies? Where do they have left to send you away to? Who will be left to send you away?”

“He’s not going to die,” Blaine said firmly, turning about to try to find the source of his father’s disembodied voice. “He’s not.”

“Then it will be you who dies, and thousands of others because of it,” his father’s voice said, and then it was gone.

Blaine started to walk again, picking his way through the battlefield. It could have been minutes or hours before he saw movement, and at that same instant everything around him disappeared.

Kurt, it had to be Kurt, must be Kurt, stood up, the only thing visible in the darkness, and then Blaine was standing behind him with no memory of moving, and he reached out for his shoulder.

“Kurt?”

Kurt whirled around and jumped backward, and Blaine tried to force a smile. After all those bodies though, he knew that it looked fake.

“Are you actually Blaine?” Kurt asked incredulously, keeping his distance. “What are you doing?”

“Having a vision,” Blaine said, shrugging. That was as good an explanation as any, and he preferred it to having lost his mind. “Are you actually Kurt?”

“Yes, but why are you having a vision?” Blaine felt an odd presence behind him, but there was nothing there when he checked over his shoulder. He moved in to Kurt, hoping that experience with visions translated to skill with handing invisible threats in them. Kurt held his ground, peering over Blaine’s shoulder himself.

“There’s something we’re supposed to stop. I don’t know what, I just know that you were here, but you weren’t you, and my father was here, and then there was a field full of dead people and then I saw you and everything else disappeared.” An unexpected blast of cold air hit him, and he shivered, goosebumps popping up on his skin. Kurt twitched a half-second later when it struck him, and then flinched.

He grabbed Blaine’s hand, lacing their fingers together tightly. Blaine looked at him quickly, eyes wide, and Kurt explained, “When I’ve dreamed this before, we’ve always been holding hands. I remember this part. Don’t let go.”

Well, at least one of them knew what was happening, even if he looked half-terrified by it. Blaine wiggled his hand to slot them together more firmly, and then asked, “What’s this part?”

“Death,” Kurt said, and then Blaine could hear the sound of a horse’s hooves on a hard surface. “It’s time to go.”

Blaine felt something wrap around his leg and slide of, and he gasped and jerked into Kurt’s side. Kurt tugged on his hand, jerking him forward. “Don’t look, don’t look, it’s scary.”

He glanced down to confirm, and the sight of the skeletal hand reaching for Kurt’s ankle was all he needed. “Okay, faster is better here.”

Blaine followed Kurt’s lead in running from the sound of the horse’s hooves, wondering if Kurt actually had a destination or if they were just running away, and then the blackness of the ground was covered by a sea of the dead, moving and unmoving. Swords jutted up everywhere, and there was a Castle burning, just as the Tower had.

Kurt stopped, and edged as close to Blaine as he could. There was nowhere left to step without walking on a moving corpse, and Kurt’s tight grip on his hand felt as though it would break him.

Kurt squawked suddenly and nearly fell against him, his foot dragged out from underneath him, steadying himself with Blaine’s help. Through it all an eerie silence lingered, broken only by the steady beat of the horse’s hooves.

Kurt finally twisted around to see what was following them, losing his patience or his nerve, Blaine couldn’t tell which. Blaine turned with him, his chest brushing against Kurt’s as he took a quick breath and reached for a sword that wasn’t there.

Death stared down at them from atop a white horse, dressed in black plate armour and its visor pushed back to reveal a bare skull. It waved one gauntleted hand, and then the horse was gone and it was something else, something that looked almost human, but wasn’t, that smiled and that smile meant that he was going to die, and his left arm was burning with a phantom pain, and Kurt was doubling over beside him, an aborted gasp for breath falling from his lips and turning into agony and then it waved its hand and-

The ground dropped out from beneath Blaine’s feet as everything disappeared, the thing, the bodies, even Kurt. Blaine’s senses went dark, but he could still feel Kurt’s hand tightly wrapped in his.

They fell.

~*~

It was bright.

Blaine blinked his eyes, and then again and again until he could focus.

He was staring back at himself, a solemn expression on his face as he stood beside Kurt, seated on a wooden throne and holding his hands carefully in the pose of the Magician, grasping a wand that pointed towards the sky in one hand and pointing two fingers to the ground with the other. The Kurt holding his hand breathed in sharply beside him, and Blaine looked between the two versions of him, one seated and pristine, but desperately sad, and the other beside him, disheveled and still breathing hard with fear.

Blaine ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. Kurt untangled their hands, and Blaine’s fingers protested after having been locked tight for so long. “The Fool and Magician,” Kurt said. “The wanderer and the guide. I’ve had this vision before, they weren’t you and me before, Blaine, I couldn’t understand them-”

“Hello, Blaine,” the other him said. The other Kurt’s lips were moving, but no sound emerged that Blaine could hear.

“Hello?” he said tentatively. Kurt didn’t speak. Blaine glanced at him, only to find that he was staring at the silent other Kurt.

“Ignore them, Blaine. They’re busy.” The Fool held the hilt of his simple sword, a far cry from the one Jaq had gifted him with, but otherwise held still. “I know that it’s been unclear until now what was happening, but hopefully this will help.”

“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What was all that?”

“That was what happens when a vision gets filtered through a Diviner who is profoundly disturbed. You needed to receive all this information, but it was not intended to appear in that manner. There is still the possibility of a happier outcome here, Blaine, where nothing that you saw on that battlefield comes to pass. Your Diviner can’t see it, but you need to. You are a child still, unlearned and unpracticed, but if you make the right choice, you will become the Protector you ought to be. It will all hinge on one moment.”

“We’re going to do a crop reading in the south,” Blaine said slowly. “Are you saying that we shouldn’t go? That we need to be here or this will happen?” Other Blaine stayed quiet, staring at Blaine calmly. “You show us all of this, and this is all you’ll say? That I have to make a choice? What am I supposed to do?”

“That is not the point,” the Fool said, still calm and stoic. “You needed to be aware that everything will turns on one moment. If we tell you any more, that moment will not come.” He shook his head, but images blasted through Blaine’s mind. A weapon, something more deadly than anything he had ever seen or even heard of, capable of destroying entire armies.

“What is that?” he demanded. “What was that?”

“You’re going to destroy it. It’s not supposed to exist, and it could be the end of everything.” More images passed in front of his eyes, of pain and death, and Blaine felt his jaw drop open in horror.

Blaine, looked back to Kurt, who stared unblinking at the Magician before he shook his head and looked at Blaine, eyes wide and shocked.

“They can’t,” he said. “They _can’t_ -”

Blaine opened his eyes and found himself staring at wooden rafters. He lay there for a moment, trying to make the connection between the brightness of the vision and the stark reality of the roof of the inn, and then slid off of the bed when he tried to sit up, landing hard on his backside.

He automatically looked towards Kurt, who was looking back at him, awake and alert. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Kurt shrugged mutely, picking up his cards from where they’d been scattered around him. When he’d tucked them into their pouch, he looked back to Blaine. “I think it’s morning.”

Blaine forced his shaky legs straight and stood up, pulling the shutters open on the window and revealing the sun rising in the east. “I don’t...how can it be morning?”

“Blaine,” Kurt said seriously, and Blaine looked at him. The dark circles under his eyes stood out starkly against his pale cheeks, and his shoulders were slumped like it was too much effort to sit upright. “Blaine, were you really in that vision?”

“I think so,” Blaine said. “We got chased down by Death and met ourselves and then I told myself about a weapon that could kill everyone on the continent?”

Kurt twitched a little. “I have to tell you something soon,” he whispered.

“Okay, but maybe sleep first, unless you think it can’t wait. I don’t think we’re going anywhere until that’s happened, and we’ll both be more rational,” Blaine suggested. His back was killing him from the awkward position he’d been in, Kurt’s _must_ be painful, and curiosity dug at him, but he wasn’t about to try to force Kurt to share whatever he thought he had to. “The other me said that I had to make a choice,” he added delicately.

“Yes, but you don’t know when or where or what that choice will be, so good luck to us with that.” Kurt sagged down, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. “I think I need to sleep,” he said, eyes already drooping.

Blaine moved to help him up, but was surprised when Kurt’s right leg buckled underneath his, nearly dropping him. “My leg’s numb,” Kurt said in explanation. “Sorry.”

Blaine kept a hand on his elbow, providing balance while Kurt shook blood back into his feet. Once he was stable, Blaine followed him to the bed.

Kurt collapsed onto it, squirming to the far side to give Blaine room. He was gone within seconds after closing his eyes, his obvious exhaustion winning out.

Blaine lay down beside him, but it took him longer to drop off, _much_ longer, his mind filled with images from the vision and what the other Blaine had said. One thing in particular stuck in his head, and made him wonder what it was about Kurt that he was missing.

 _Profoundly disturbed_.

~*~

When Kurt awoke, he was warm. Far, far too warm. He was covered to his chin in blankets, and clumsily pushed at them until he was free. Sleep was still calling him, but he was alone in the room and didn’t think he should be.

“H’lo?” he said, rasping over the word. He cleared his throat gently and tried again. “Hello?”

No one was there, and Kurt pulled himself out of the bed curiously. He padded to the window in bare feet, opening the shutter and peeking out. It was quiet enough outside, the street lit by what had to be a hot evening sun, judging by the temperature of the air that came in, and he could hear children laughing in the distance.

There was clean water in the wash basin, and Kurt wasted no time in scrubbing off as much dirt and dried sweat as he could. It had been hot when they’d tried to do the reading, and it had become hot again while he slept.

There was a quiet knock at the door as he was securing the ties on a fresh shirt, and Blaine came in, a bag slung over his shoulder. “Oh!” he said, surprised. “You’re awake! Good, I was getting worried. I brought some food up, and I figured if you were feeling up to it, we could still get some distance this evening.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Kurt asked. “You’re the one who’s not supposed to be having visions but is.” He had more to say but stopped, slightly taken aback at his defensive tone. “Um, what I mean is, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Blaine said, setting down his bag. “No harm at all. I went out a few hours ago and explored the town a little bit. It’s like any town in Wester, really.”

“That’s good,” Kurt said, neatly folding his discarded clothes and tucking them away in his pack.

“Oh, right, food,” Blaine said, going back out into the hallway and bringing in a tray with him. “You slept most of the day, so I figured you’d want to eat something before we go.” He revealed two bowls of what appeared to be some sort of stew, and Kurt’s stomach reminded him that yes, food would be good.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was kind.” He took a bowl and cautiously tasted it. Beef, potatoes, vegetables, very bland, but he was hungry enough that he didn’t really care. He looked at the disheveled bed, and decided to sit on the floor to eat.

Blaine mimicked him, sitting nearby. “Can we talk about the vision now, or should we wait until after we eat?”

“We can talk now,” Kurt offered. “I’ve been seeing it for months, but I know you must have questions.”

Blaine nodded. “Okay, um, start with the obvious. What happened?”

Kurt chewed and swallowed before he tried to answer. “You had a vision, obviously, I think you know that. The world believed that you needed to see that as well as me, so I was given a joint vision that couldn’t make sense until you were there to experience it with me.” He watched Blaine, waiting for comprehension, but it didn’t come. “It was like I was doing a reading for you, sort of. Nearly everything that you saw came directly from my mind’s interpretation of the vision, which means that parts of it could be very unreliable.”

"Okay," Blaine said finally. "I guess that sort of explains it? Kind of?"

"It's all very murky," Kurt said. "Divination is far from exact. The smaller things are more reliable, but even then, it's hard to say. One choice could change so many things. If a crop reading says to plant barley because the price will be high, but another farmer has a reading done that says the same thing, and both plant barley, it could be that wheat would've been more profitable. All the two of us can do with that vision is take it as it comes."

"That was a lot of dead people to take it as it comes, Kurt," Blaine said, setting down his bowl. "All those people will die if we make the wrong choices."

"If you make the wrong choice," Kurt corrected. "All I can do is try to help you make it, not make it for you. Didn't you notice that I was the Magician and you were the Fool? I don't think that came from my mind. My role in this will be to guide. Yours is to make that choice."

Blaine grimaced. "I don't really like the sound of that," he admitted.

"I don't either, Blaine. Do you want to know what the Magician told me? That I have to trust you. Do you know what it's like to have a vision tell you that your fate is in someone else's hands, that you don't get to control what happens to you? At least you get the choice, that one moment when you decide what happens next." Kurt blinked furiously and turned his face away. "I don't ever seem to get the choice."

Blaine touched his arm gently. "I'm sorry."

"Me too. I'm especially sorry about this, but apparently if I don't tell you, you die. Isn't it wonderful that we got one piece of specific instruction from a night-long vision?" Kurt sucked in a deep breath. "Karofsky doesn’t like women the way he’s supposed to. Like we don’t."

Blaine's hand dropped to the floor with a thunk that would've been funny if Kurt wasn't gearing up for a barrage of questions that he didn't want to answer. "That doesn't- What?" Blaine said incredulously.

"He hates me, and himself by extension, and I really did run away after I did that reading. But it was because of what he did, not because I stole anything."

There was no sound from Blaine, and Kurt kept his face averted. "I should've known better than to do the reading," he mumbled. "I knew I couldn't trust him, but I didn't know that he was that way."

Still nothing from Blaine, and Kurt had rehearsed this in his head a hundred times while he'd been in his room, why was it so hard now? "He’s so much bigger than me, and it didn't matter because I couldn't have stopped him anyway, not after I'd taken the herbs, but he stopped himself, because he realized it was too far and he was afraid, because he wanted me to fight, I don't know, but as soon as I could, I ran." He laughed a little. "I was so stupid, I didn't even take my horse or my pack or anything, I just had to get out. I didn't even make it hard for him to chase me down, and I was so scared, so, so scared, when he tied me up and told people I was a thief, and they didn't even question him, because who would question a Protector?"

His face was wet now, salty tears running into his mouth, and Blaine was still quiet, how could he be quiet? "He kept me tied up the whole way back, and every night when we stopped I wondered if that was the night when he would try again, but he didn't. He looked at me like he wanted me and hated me, and he'd whisper threats and tie me to trees but he never touched me like that again. And I am such a coward, such an idiot, that when we got back to the Tower and it was my word against his, I didn't say anything. Because I knew that he would kill me."

Kurt heaved a shaky breath. "And that's when I locked myself in my room, and you're the third person in the entire world to know what he did to me, so _please_ say something."

"He tried to-" Blaine stalled, voice choking up. Kurt turned to look at him, and his face was flushed, his eyes glittering with wetness.

"After I did the reading, he took me back to the room we'd been given. I was still in a trance, but I realized what was happening when he began to take off my clothes and then his. There was no try. He touched me in ways that I never wanted from him, and then he panicked and ran out of the room, and it is so, so foolish, but I'm _grateful_ to him for stopping." Kurt choked on an inhale and tilted his face up, trying to regain his composure.

"But he was your Protector," Blaine said dumbly.

"I don't think that mattered to him," Kurt said, and oh, there went his voice, straight into a tearful rasp.

His bowl was removed from his hands, and then Blaine placed one hand on Kurt's back, too warm but comforting all the same.

"I'm so sorry," he said. “I am so, so sorry that he did that to you, and you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” Kurt thought that he could hear an edge to Blaine’s voice, but when he looked at him, he couldn’t see anything but gentleness in his eyes.

“I’m not brave,” Kurt said, caught up in his eyes. Blaine tugged a kerchief out of his pocket and wiped the tears of Kurt’s cheeks, and then just looked at him.

“You are,” he said. “Everyone who meets you can see it.” He wriggled a little closer and got up on his knees. “Can I?” he asked.

Kurt looked at him, not sure what he meant. “Can you what?” he asked, focusing on wiping the tears off his cheeks.

“Um, it’s just, it seems like you could use a hug.” Blaine looked sad, and that was everything. He cared, and he believed him, and Kurt didn’t want to think about what his face had just revealed because Blaine leaned down and wrapped his arms around him slowly, giving him time to pull away.

Kurt leaned in a little instead, and Blaine’s arms settled around his shoulders, a comforting weight. With Kurt sitting and Blaine kneeling, he was at the perfect height to hide his face in Blaine’s chest, which he didn’t, because this was not his dad and he was not a little boy anymore, but he did close his eyes, feeling a little of his sadness unspool and float away.

Kurt lost count of his breaths, focusing on the rise and fall of Blaine’s chest beside his face. Blaine started to pull away eventually, and Kurt realized that he should’ve responded if he wanted Blaine to stay. He reached one arm around Blaine’s waist, resting his hand flat on his back, and held onto the front of his shirt with the other, giving in and pressing his forehead into Blaine’s collarbone. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Just another minute.”

“Okay,” Blaine said, his breath gently touching over Kurt’s hair. He adjusted a little, and then he was rubbing a soothing hand over Kurt’s shoulder blade.

They stayed like that for some time, and it was too hot to be so close but Blaine wasn’t moving and Kurt didn’t want to. It was absurd, he knew that, but on the floor of some random inn with a boy he’d known for three days, he felt safe.

“Are you going to be okay?” Blaine finally whispered.

Someday, maybe soon, maybe not so soon, their actions would be the difference between life and death for thousands of people, and Kurt didn’t know if he had the courage to do what needed to be done, no matter what Blaine said. But right then, right at that moment, it was hard to not think that everything would be fine. He’d told, and even if Karofsky would try to kill him if he knew he’d told, he felt better for it. Braver.

“Yes,” Kurt said. “Yes, I am.”

~*~

Morrane was hot.

It was also green and beautiful, with fields of tall plants that swayed in the gentle breeze, but it was mostly hot. Which wasn’t exactly a change from the last three weeks of riding to reach the southernmost part of Farhold, watching as Kurt found new and exciting ways to protect his skin from the sun without overheating, but Blaine felt the fact that he had to swipe sweat off his face every few minutes was noteworthy.

They’d slowed their pace to protect the horses, and it had ended up feeling more like a leisurely trip than a mission

The grey walls of the town that surrounded Castle Morrane had become visible late the evening before, too far away to press on that night. It was mid-afternoon now, the sun high in the sky and workers in the fields weeding the crops, and they were approaching the gates, wide open for the day.

A guard stepped out in front of the gates as they rode through. “State your business in Morrane, please,” he said in a bored drawl, tapping his finger against his thigh.

“Diviner and Protector, as requested,” Kurt said in a formal tone, holding out the letter that had been sent to the Tower.

The guard gave a cursory glance over it and shrugged. “I’ll send a note ahead to tell the castle you’ve arrived. Welcome to Morrane, please dismount.”

Blaine swung his leg over and dismounted, patting his horse on the side of his neck. Kurt was already down, taking the letter back from the guard and tucking it away.

“Thank you,” Blaine said as he passed the guard.

“Pleasure,” he said, walking back into the guardhouse. A messenger bird fluttered out of the window a few moments later, flying past them on a straight route to the castle, which was mostly obscured by the inner walls.

“You do the haughty Diviner voice very well,” Blaine said, grinning at Kurt.

“We had a class on it,” Kurt replied. “Didn’t you?”

Blaine stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if he was joking, before shaking his head. “No, and you didn’t either.”

“No, we did,” Kurt said. “It consisted of Sue Sylvester yelling at us for forty-five minutes and then getting bored and canceling the rest of it.”

Blaine had been told enough about Sue Sylvester (“-pushed her down the stairs, Blaine, I’m not making it up”) that he was past disbelief. Either Kurt was the best liar he’d ever met, or Farhold Tower had been a very interesting place to live. Blaine leaned toward the latter.

They walked side by side along the main street of the town, curving past shops and inns and open air markets. There was no straight line to the castle, a common design to prevent the easy passage of siege engines in case of invasion, but they reached it soon enough.

The castle gates were closed, but a shouted order from inside as they approached had them swinging open. Three women were waiting inside, and they were summarily relieved of their horses by two of them.

“Your bags will be brought to your room,” the third one said. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to the reading chamber. Her Ladyship is occupied this afternoon, but his Lordship has made himself available, if you’re prepared for the reading.”

Blaine looked at her and then to Kurt, who smiled gracefully despite the surprise he’d been showing. “Certainly,” he said. “His Lordship must have been very concerned about the crops next year to clear his schedule for the afternoon when he must be busy. I wouldn’t want keep him waiting.”

The woman smiled tightly at them, turning to lead the way. Blaine lagged behind a little so he could lean in and whisper to Kurt without fear of being overheard, “This is weird here too, right? It’s not just that Wester customs are different?”

“No,” Kurt said, the fake smile falling off his face. “This is extremely rude of them, to demand the reading as soon as I’ve arrived. They haven’t called for a Diviner for several years, though, so I’m not surprised that they’ve let some of the traditions slip.”

They followed the woman through a set of beautifully inlaid wooden doors, and into a lavishly decorated entrance hall. “This way,” she said, leading them through the hall and into a corridor. “For convenience, there is a room next to the reading room for the two of you. Your belongings will be left there.”

They stopped at a door just down the hall from a man carrying Blaine’s packs over his shoulder and entering another room. “I take it that’s the room?” he asked. “Do you mind if I look in for a moment so there are no surprises after the reading?”

“Of course not, Protector,” the woman said. “Please, go ahead. In the meantime, Diviner, I’ve prepared the reading room for you, but I have little experience with it. If you would come with me, we can ensure that no time is wasted if there is something missing.”

Kurt looked at Blaine, silently asking for an objection, but Blaine didn’t have one. They had been rude, but this was courteous enough, and almost in line with previous readings he’d attended. “That’s fine,” Kurt said. “I’ll be in here, Blaine.”

He followed the woman into the room. Blaine caught a glimpse of candles through the open door as he walked down the hallway. The man who’d been carrying his bags was just leaving, and he held the door open for Blaine.

“Thank you,” Blaine said, stepping into the room. A bare stone chamber greeted him, windowless and lit by torches. His bags were piled in the corner, but more pressing was that there were several burly men and women standing directly in front of him with threatening smiles on their faces. The door was slammed closed behind him, cutting off a cry that could’ve only come from Kurt.

They were armoured but unarmed, and the way that they were crowding spoke to them wanting a prisoner, not a corpse, but each of them was half his size again, and Blaine had no illusions about his chances. He had his sword out of its scabbard in a heartbeat, and stabbed at the nearest man, who flinched back, but it was all the opening one of the women needed to get inside his guard and press him up against the door.

He swung again anyway, drawing blood this time, but then his sword hand was pinned up against the wall by someone much stronger than he was, and someone was fumbling with his sword belt. He kicked out at them, getting in a sharp blow to their shin, but then the woman who had him pinned punched him in the side of his skull and the world exploded into sparks.

When it faded back in, his belt was gone and so was his sword, and his hands were being roughly secured behind his back. The click of manacles instead of the roughness of rope gave him some hope of escape, but he didn’t have a chance, not unarmed, and not with Kurt-

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded. “What did you do to Kurt?”

None of them answered, and then he was pulled away from the door and dragged into the nearest corner, where a single shackle dangled from a metal loop set into the wall. He tried to twist away as it was locked around the chain between his hands, but he was outnumbered and overpowered.

Two of them slid down him to grab his legs at the knee, and then the woman that had hit him into the door yanked at the laces of his boots until they were loose enough that she could tug them off. Blaine thrashed in their grip as a second set of shackles was locked tightly around his ankles, and then he was released as they backed up to survey their handiwork.

“You made that way, way too easy,” one of the men said. “I can’t believe you actually abandoned your Diviner like that.”

Blaine nearly jerked his shoulder out of its socket when he tried to attack him. “Let me go and I might not kill you,” he snarled. The man just laughed, and Blaine saw red, pulling at the chain until his arms were nearly at full extension behind him.

The woman smacked him in the back of the head. “Don’t be stupid, Irwin.” She banged on the door. “You can let us out any time now, or did you actually think that one little boy was going to get away from five of us?”

The door opened immediately, and they trooped out into the hall, leaving Blaine alone. The click of the lock was loud and audible, and Blaine bit his lip in frustration until it bled. “Okay, fine, if that’s how we’re doing it.”

They’d actually left his sword, the idiots. Did they think that once you took a Protector down and locked him up that he’d stay there docilely? He listened hard for any sound from the corridor, from the next door over, but it was silent. Whatever they’d done to Kurt, it was quiet.

The magic to open the locks was a matter of seconds, and then he was free. He set the manacles down as quietly as he could and went for his sword, strapping on his belt and picking it up from where they’d left it.

He pressed his ear up against the door, but it was quiet. He let out a breathless sigh, hoping that the lock wasn’t magical, or he was in trouble. When it clicked open easily, he threw it open, revealing an empty corridor.

“Seriously?” he whispered. “Fine.” He pulled in several deep breaths. The unexpected transition from slightly weird pre-divination procedure to getting separated and beaten up still had his heart pumping, and that wasn’t helpful. He had to be calm, because Kurt needed him to be.

He leaned into the closed door of the room that Kurt had followed the woman into, listening closely. “-his mouth needs to stay open, are you literally too stupid to live?” a deep, male voice said.

“You’re talking to me like I’ve done this before. Excuse me for wanting to keep the rest of my fingers attached.” He could hear Kurt, making little choked sounds like he was crying, and hoped that the room would be dark. He probed the lock, making sure he didn’t need to unlock it, and threw the door open, following it with a blast of bright light. Protector-level magic wasn’t as powerful as a mage’s, but if it was used correctly it didn’t matter.

He opened his eyes to see people recoiling and swearing. A cup clattered off the floor, splashing Kurt, who was pinned down by two of the same men who’d attacked Blaine, with a third releasing his face, leaving white fingermarks on his cheeks.

There were seven people in the room besides him and Kurt, and only two were armed. One man was much more richly dressed than the others, half-risen from a chair. He was also the closest to Blaine, and there was his opening. He sprung, closing the gap between them and pushed him back down into the chair, leveling his sword at his throat.

The others, just recovering from the blinding flash of light, stilled instantly. “Let him up, or you die,” Blaine said to the man, who scowled up at him but didn’t say anything. “You’re the Lord of Morrane, aren’t you? I don’t know what your plan is, but is keeping us here really worth your life?”

“Let him up,” the man ordered grudgingly. The two men still holding Kurt down released him immediately, and he stumbled over to Blaine.

“Are you okay?” he asked, sucking in deep breaths and holding a hand over his cheek.

“Fine, you?” Blaine said, focusing on Lord Morrane. “Stand up,” he ordered. He stood up slowly, and Blaine let his face fall into a frown. “You’re going to walk us out of here, my lord, and if your soldiers come after us, you’ll be the first to die. Understood?”

“Understood, Protector,” he said. “I have no intention of dying today.”

Blaine lowered the tip of his sword until it was level with Morrane’s gut, and prodded him to begin walking. Kurt fell in beside him, watching their backs. “Blaine,” he whispered when they were halfway down the corridor, “Blaine, they gave me something.”

“What do you mean?” he whispered back.

“They were trying to make me drink something, and I did drink some of it. I feel fine, it wasn’t very much, but- just- I’m not sure what it was. It didn’t taste like trance herbs.” Kurt looked over their shoulders, and Blaine felt a slow roiling burn of anger start.

“It wouldn’t have,” the Lord said, not turning around. “Mostly because it wasn’t.”

“What was it then?” Kurt demanded. “Why did you try to take us prisoner?”

“A war cannot be won when one side can predict the future and the other cannot,” he said. “We needed a Diviner.”

Blaine stopped walking. “You’re starting a war. A war with who?”

Morrane turned around, smiling. “How are you feeling, Diviner?” he asked in a solicitous tone. “Tired?”

Kurt stared at him hard for a moment and pointedly looked away. “Blaine, there should be more people here, we have to keep moving.”

Lord Morrane was already walking again, and Blaine hurried to keep him in range. “You okay?” he mouthed silently to Kurt. Kurt shook his head a little and sped up, and Blaine’s resisted the urge to run through Morrane right then and there. They needed him, and if Kurt wasn’t okay, they weren’t going to make it out anyway.

There were soldiers waiting in the entrance hall for them, weapons drawn and faces grim. “Tell them to stand aside,” Blaine said.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Lord Morrane said. “Elaine?”

“The gates are manned,” a woman standing beside the soldiers said. “How much longer?”

“Can’t be too long,” he said, stealing a glance at Kurt.

“Tell them to move,” Kurt said sharply. “You won’t be told a third time.”

“You aren’t a killer, you’re hardly old enough to shave. Put down your sword, little Protector,” the man said patronizingly, “and you won’t be executed for threatening my life.”

Blaine prodded him with the point of the sword. “Call them off,” he insisted.

“No.”

Kurt listed hard into Blaine, catching himself just before they both fell to the ground. Blaine steadied him, and Kurt _looked_ at him, eyes wide and fearful. “Blaine, _run_ ,” he whispered. “Get a message to the Tower. They have to know.”

“The Tower will know soon enough anyway. Their majesties should be ashamed of themselves, using a sacred institution such as the Tower for assassination attempts, and the people of Morrane won’t stand for it.” Lord Morrane had taken the opportunity to retreat to a safe distance, and he smirked at them, his back to his soldiers again.

“What?” Blaine said, anger momentarily replaced by confusion.

Lord Morrane spoke louder again. “Surrender, assassins, and I’ll be lenient. Continue on this foolhardy path, and you will not survive the day.”

Kurt’s knees buckled underneath him, and Blaine couldn’t hold him up with one hand. He slowed his fall as much as he could, guiding him down to the floor. “Kurt?” he asked.

“Blaine, _go_ ,” Kurt ordered, his voice thick.

“Don’t bother,” Morrane said. “There’s nowhere left for you to go. You might as well stay with him.”

Blaine glared hatefully, and dropped to his knees beside Kurt. “I won’t leave you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Kurt blinked at him, opened his mouth like he was going to speak, and then drooped like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“And there we go,” the woman said. “Seize them.”

~*~

“He killed eight people before they took him down.”

His mouth felt like it was full of cotton, and his eyelids were stuck together, and the man’s voice was familiar in a horribly uneasy way.

Cool liquid dribbled over his eyes, and Kurt blinked them open. Thick wooden beams ran the length of the ceiling, but he could only trace them for a moment before he got dizzy and had to close his eyes again. He was on a bed, he thought, he could feel a mattress underneath him.

“Did you hear me?” the man said. “Eight people.”

Kurt thought back, trying to remember what had happened. Finally, he croaked, “Who?” almost silently. A tiny bit of water was poured into his mouth, and Kurt worked it around clumsily. His lips and tongue felt numb, like he’d made the worst measuring mistake of his life and nearly killed himself with trance herbs.

“Your boyfriend, Hummel, remember him? Short, murderous?”

“Blaine?” Blaine should _be_ here. It didn’t make sense that he wasn’t here, because he was his Protector and _oh_.

He opened his eyes again, tipping his head so he was facing the speaker. His vision swam with the movement, and when it cleared, he was looking straight at David Karofsky.

“No,” he said, all rational thought driven from his mind. “No.”

Karofsky reached for him, and Kurt jerked away. Metal clinked against itself, and his wrists hurt suddenly, and Karofsky had his arms.

Karofsky tipped Kurt’s face back up and lifted his limp arms, weak with something, showing Kurt the shackles that held his hands together. “Yes.”

Nausea bubbled up, disrupting the heavy grey fog that filled his mind. It must have shown on his face, because Karofsky dropped his hands and rolled him over onto his side. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ignore the urge to gag, but the sensation of Karofsky’s hands on him as he was pulled to the edge of mattress combined with the motion was too much.

He choked and gagged, but there was nothing to come up. Karofsky held him over the edge for a moment longer, supporting his head when he couldn’t lift it, then let him fall back to the mattress.

Black spots danced across Kurt’s vision, and he couldn’t gather his thoughts. When Karofsky reached for him again, he flung his hands up, trying to hit them away. “Don’t,” he said, as clearly as he could manage.

Karofsky pushed his hands down and leaned in. “Show a little respect for your Protector, Hummel,” he said with a grin. “There’s no one here to help you if you don’t.”

He ran a hand down Kurt’s arm, and held onto his forearm. Kurt couldn’t help and didn’t try to hide his shiver of revulsion. “I think you probably need some water, and then we can go. There’s a lot of work for you to do.”

“No,” Kurt said again, trying to roll away. Karofsky held him down easily, dodging when he lurched forward to headbutt him. Kurt fell back against the mattress, breathing hard from even that much movement. He couldn’t think, his brain wasn’t working right, but he knew that he didn’t want to be near Karofsky, that “work” was bad. “You’re not my Protector.”

Karofsky smirked down at him, affecting a formal tone. “Your former Protector is guilty of the attempted assassination of his Lordship, Callum of Morrane, and the murder of eight soldiers of the Morrane Guard, and you helped him. For the safety of the lord and lady, you’ve been separated and confined pending interrogation, and your supervision has been assigned to David Karofsky, formerly a Protector of Farhold Tower, now of Morrane.”

Karofsky dragged Kurt into a sitting position by the chain between his hands, the shackles biting harshly into his wrists. Kurt tried to pull his arms back, panic and dizziness edging up. He was supposed to be safe from him, Karofsky was gone, he couldn’t be there. Karofsky grabbed his feet and turned him on the bed so they were dangling off, pulling the thin sheet off him roughly.

His boots were gone, but his clothes were still on, and that was such a relief that Kurt was tearing up before he could think about it. “Stand up,” Karofsky ordered, stepping back and letting go of Kurt completely. Without the support, Kurt flopped back down to the bed, his muscles unwilling to hold him up. His head bounced off the mattress, and the room spun around him.

“Really, Hummel? I mean, I’ve seen you be more pathetic, but this is pretty sad.” Kurt focused on breathing, on the simple rhythm of in and out, in and out, and then there was a large hand wrapped around his inner thigh, just above his knee and he couldn’t breathe at all. “You can get up, or I can start moving my hand up. Your choice.”

Kurt was halfway to sitting with the strength of sheer panic before it failed him and he dropped back to the bed. Karofsky laughed and started to slide his hand up, sending fresh jolts of panic up Kurt’s spine.

He couldn’t get up, he couldn’t get up, he was _touching_ him and Kurt couldn’t- he just couldn’t. He tried to hit Karofsky’s hand away, but he just grabbed the chain of the shackles with his free hand and pulled Kurt’s up and he was squeezing his thigh in his hand and it was too tight, he couldn’t breathe and there were black spots in his vision but then Karofsky’s hand was gone, and with the slam of a door, Kurt was alone.

The ceiling twirled circles around him, and he gave up trying to force his eyes to focus. He’d been drugged, he knew he had been, Blaine was gone, and Karofsky...Karofsky shouldn’t be there. He was originally from the north, he had bragged about it often enough, and he shouldn’t be in Morrane but he was and there was going to be a war, and if this was why the vision had told him to trust Blaine he should smother himself with a pillow because Karofsky was going to come back and there was nothing to stop him now and Blaine was only one person.

Kurt blinked, and the swirling slowed and blurred and darkened, filling his mind with soothing patterns and lights. The fog in his mind thickened again, and he drifted in it.

~*~

When Kurt became aware again, the world was stable, his feet were tied together, and his arms were stuck above his head.

The man who’d followed his soldiers into the room where Kurt had been told he would perform the reading stood over him. “What’s your name, Diviner?”

Being drugged and hit and touched by Karofsky and separated from Blaine was still sitting at the forefront of his mind. Kurt clamped his lips together and stared up at him, the man who was presumably Lord Callum of Morrane.

“I know his name, my lord,” Karofsky said loudly from the other side of the room. Kurt froze, and hated himself for being so obvious.

“You served with him at the Tower?” Lord Callum asked.

“I was his Protector once, my lord. He’s not a good Diviner, but I got pretty good at keeping him in line.” Kurt refused to look, but he could _hear_ the way that Karofsky’s lip had curled.

“Yes, I can see that he’s still afraid of you,” he said. “Wait outside, please.”

Kurt looked around to see Karofsky leave silently, but a gentle touch to his arm jerked his attention back to Lord Callum.

“The people have been told that you were sent by the King and Queen to kill me and my wife,” he said. “I imagine that most of them know it isn’t true, but we have enough forged papers to start a war, and that’s what we’re going to do. And we’re going to win. Your influence would be minimal but valuable in helping us to predict the royal armies’ movements, but it’s the difference between your life and death, and your Protector’s life or death.”

“No.” There was no other answer he could give.

“No, what?” the man’s voice was soft but silky dangerous, and Kurt knew he was signing his own death warrant.

“You’re about to ask me to perform divinations for you, to help you win a war to overthrow the Crown. I won’t.”

Lord Callum leaned forward, an unsettling sparkle in his blue eyes. “Very well then, it seems your mind is made up already. Shall we talk about you instead? You have an unusual voice for a young man, and a male Protector too. He seems to care about you very much. David, on the other hand, he doesn’t seem as comfortable with himself as you and your Protector are, but I’ve seen the way he looks at men, and the way he looked at you just know. I’ll admit that when I add what I know of his demeanour to that it makes me reluctant to leave you alone with him, but there’s nothing for it. I can’t spare anyone else to guard you if you refuse to make yourself useful, Diviner. I hope you’ll understand.”

Kurt felt the blood drain from his face, and Lord Callum chuckled, patting his shoulder gently. “I’ll be sure to let David know what his boundaries are, don’t worry. Though, I do have several other men who are too violent to be allowed in polite company serving me, and they do know about you, Diviner, and David can’t be here all the time. I hate to leave you unprotected, I know that my men can be rough, but I just can’t help you unless you help me too. And oh, there’s your Protector too, he’s as young and pretty and vulnerable as you are, I’m afraid, and it would be a-”

“You stay away from him,” Kurt said, his hands jerking against the restraints, surprising himself with the intensity. “If you hurt him, I will make sure that you don’t survive to see justice.”

“That’s adorable, he said the same thing about you. I won’t be doing anything. You’re the one holding all the cards here, _Diviner_.” He smiled at his own joke and gripped Kurt’s outstretched arm, a little too hard to be anything but a threat. “It’s a rather beautiful day, quite a shame that you’re missing it, but that’s life, I suppose. Your Protector, Blaine? I hear he’s been having quite the time. I’ll have David take you down to go see him. If you change your mind about performing readings for me, just let someone know.” He spoke with the confidence and finality of someone who knew how to get their way and was accustomed to getting it.

Karofsky came back as the lord left, wordlessly unbuckling Kurt’s shackles from the head of the bed and tugging him upright. “Walk,” he ordered. Kurt hesitated. He wanted to go see Blaine, needed to know that he was okay, but it was Karofsky giving the orders, and that was so familiar that Kurt wanted to scream, wanted to run despite the chains, wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. But it was Blaine, he needed to see that he was alright, and that meant that he had to walk.

He had to take tiny steps to keep from falling, the chain between his ankles hobbling him. Karofsky walked directly behind him, too fast for Kurt to move comfortably and still keep his distance, Karofsky’s breath cringingly hot on the back of his neck.

They came to the head of a flight of stairs, and Kurt considered the length of the chain and the height of each step, and came up lacking. “I can’t go down these,” he said, prompting another prod in the back by Karofsky, what did he think Kurt was going do? Kurt impulsively considered obeying and taking the first step. He probably wouldn’t die, but he wouldn’t be in any condition to perform as a Diviner either, and it would give the Tower time to realize that he’d stopped sending updates and something had gone wrong. And Karofsky wouldn’t be trusted to “take care of him” any longer, and that was a lot of positives.

Karofsky grabbed his arm as he stepped forward, jerking him back. “On your ass, Hummel,” he said. “I know it’s probably still sore, but I’m not carrying you.” He pressed heavily on Kurt’s shoulders until his knees folded underneath him and he landed with a painful thud on the stone floor.

He bit his tongue to keep from telling Karofsky what he really thought of him, and wondered when he’d learned to shut his mouth in a dangerous situation. Or, more likely he hadn’t, and the trembling in his legs was from fear of what Karofsky would do if Kurt pissed him off, not the stress of being held prisoner.

Kurt slid down the stairs, slowly and carefully, with both hands on one side of his body. Karofsky hauled him upright by his collar at the bottom, Kurt’s skin crawling at the brush of his fingers and pushed him forward.

“I haven’t got all day, Hummel, move a little faster.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kurt snapped. “I didn’t realize I was keeping you from your busy schedule of molestation and betrayal because _my feet are chained together_ , you disgusting-”

No, he really, really hadn’t managed to stop from snapping at stupid people, even when it was a bad idea, and this one was a colossally bad idea, judging from the way Karofsky had slammed him up against the wall and pressed his body up against him from behind.

“You missed this, didn’t you?” Karofsky asked, pressing Kurt’s face into the wall. “You dirty little creep, you want me to touch you.”

“No,” Kurt said, the angle and pressure on his mouth keeping him from saying anything else.

“You do. You were always walking around the Tower, swinging your hips and begging for someone, anyone to take you, and it used to make me so angry. You ruined my life, Kurt.” He said it calmly, quietly, into Kurt’s hair, pressing into him tighter when Kurt tried to get away. “I was _normal_ before you, and then you practically begged me to touch you and cried about it to Sylvester when I took the invitation, but you still want it. I could take you right now, and you wouldn’t even try to stop me.”

“ _No_ ,” Kurt forced out again. There was nothing else for him to say but that. The terror that rose up in him at the realization that Karofsky’s issues ran so much deeper than he’d thought made him thrash, but his hands were pinned in front of him, and his legs were chained together, and Karofsky was just pressing him into the wall harder and he couldn’t get in enough air to keep struggling. He subsided, breathing hard and trying to ignore the subtle movements of Karofsky’s hips against his backside.

“We’ll have lots of chances to talk about your issues later, Kurt, don’t worry,” Karofsky said, stepping off of him and letting him slide to the ground. “I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

~*~


	4. Chapter 4

~*~

Morrane was hot.

Blaine dimly remembered making that observation before, but it was difficult to think of anything else when he’d been in direct sunlight since dawn. They’d figured out that shackles wouldn’t hold him, apparently someone in Morrane did know what magic Protectors could use, because after they’d disarmed him a second time, he’d been carried outside and away from Kurt, and tied down into a pillory.

His back ached from being bent over, and his wrist and neck had splinters from the wood around them. The holes in the plank were not nearly big enough to fit his hands or head back through, and Blaine thought that his brain might be boiling in his skull from the heat. And Kurt was somewhere else. The last time he’d seen him, he been limp on the floor of the castle, and Blaine was getting nervous. The threats that the Lord of Morrane had made when he’d “interrogated” Blaine hadn’t been subtle.

Blaine tipped his chin down, resting it against the edge of the wood under his throat so that he could relax his neck without constricting his airway. He closed his eyes, grateful that at least he was mostly being left alone, and tried to even out his breathing to get a little rest. It had been a long, long night, and he was exhausted.

He awoke with a painful start when a cool, gentle hand cupped his cheek. “Hey, shh, it’s okay,” Kurt crooned, putting his hand back on Blaine’s face and helping him support his head.

“Kurt?” he said, voice dry and cracking. “Are you okay?” He blinked until his eyes focused, and Kurt looked bad, his hair messy and cheeks streaked with dry tears.

Kurt nodded, biting his lip. “How long have you been out here?” he asked gently. “Are you hurt?”

“Your hands are chained,” Blaine said as Kurt awkwardly adjusted his grip. “So are your feet.”

“I know,” Kurt said, but there was no bite to it. “Blaine, how long have you been out here?” He laid the back of his other hand against Blaine’s forehead, and Blaine sighed. Kurt’s hands were so cool, and he was so hot, and he closed his eyes. “Blaine, _how long_?”

Kurt’s voice cut through the sleepiness that he was starting to feel, and he thought carefully. “Yesterday?” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He nuzzled his face into Kurt’s hands. “You feel good.”

“I want to talk to your lord again,” Kurt said angrily. Blaine opened his mouth to protest, he didn’t have a lord, and he didn’t mean to make Kurt mad, but then he opened his eyes and realized he was talking to someone else.

“Huh,” A man said, and Blaine didn’t think he knew him, but he couldn’t turn his head to see because Kurt was holding him. “I knew you were easy, Hummel, but this is almost impressive. I figured that it would take a little longer than this to break you.”

“Kurt,” he said, and that was wrong, Kurt needed to not do that, but everything was confusing. “Kurt. You can’t.”

“It’ll be okay, Blaine,” Kurt said, and then he dropped to his knees to whisper into Blaine’s ear. “I trust you. Do you trust me?”

Blaine swallowed. “Of course.”

“Then trust me when I say that I will keep you safe Blaine, and stop this war at the same time.” Kurt combed his hair back from his forehead, letting his fingers slip over tangles, and kissed the skin he’d uncovered. “It’s going to be okay.”

Kurt was jerked away from him, and Blaine glared up at whoever it was, only to have his words die on his tongue. He knew that face. He’d met him once before, but that had been enough, and he was supposed to be gone, was supposed to be far away.

“That’s enough of that,” Karofsky snapped. “No one wants to see you two freaks doing _that_.”

By the time Blaine’s overheated mind had realized exactly what Karofsky being there could mean, he was dragging Kurt away. “Kurt?” he called, trying to pull his hands through the too-small holes.

“I’m okay,” Kurt called back. “I’ll be okay.” He stumbled over his chains, but Karofsky didn’t stop, just wrapped an arm around Kurt’s waist and kept going, dragging his feet when Kurt couldn’t move them fast enough.

Blaine tugged harder, trying to get one free. He didn’t know what he’d do with it, but the frustration that had been building all day abruptly boiled over at the sight of the guy who’d hurt Kurt more than anyone else in the world holding him like that, and his hand was raw and bleeding before he exhausted himself and had to stop.

He was alone for a long time after that. He tried to count the seconds, but lost track almost immediately. He recognized that he was in trouble, that the heat was slowly killing him, but by the time that the plank above him was being removed and he was carried across someone’s shoulders and laid down on a cool surface he had stopped caring.

There was a cold hand on his forehead and a high, gentle voice talking to him, and he smiled a little. Kurt had promised. He had promised, and now the sun was gone and Blaine hurt all over but Kurt was there, and he would protect Blaine until Blaine could protect him again.

 ~*~

Karofsky dropped Kurt unceremoniously at the feet of another guard just inside the castle, and Kurt bit his lip to keep from cursing him. He had to be cowed, or he wouldn’t fool anybody. “I have to go find his lordship, make sure he doesn’t run.”

“Fine,” the guard said, rolling her eyes. Karofsky strode away, and she barely waited until he was out to earshot to mutter, “I hate that guy.”

“What did he do to you?” Kurt asked. They had a few minutes, anyway, and Kurt felt ten times safer just being away from Karofsky, despite the fact that he was still chained and a prisoner.

“He’s been here all of a week, and he’s all puffed up because he was recruited as soon as he left the Tower and he knows the best ways to keep you and your Protector from escaping, and everyone’s listening to him. But he’s a total jerk to rest of us, and he’s all “Yes, my lord” and “Of course, my lady” whenever they say _anything_ to him. Total ass kisser.” She scowled when she was finished her rant. “It sucks for you that he’s your guard, but I don’t have to see him, so it’s cool.”

“He was kicked out of the Tower for rape,” Kurt said, because it wasn’t strictly true, but it would’ve been if he’d been braver then, and he had nothing left to lose now by warning people. “You should tell people that they don’t want to be alone with him.”

“What, seriously?” Kurt nodded. “No, seriously, seriously?”

“He was my Protector once.”

“Oh,” the guard said. “Oh! Sucks to be you, kid. Talk about unlucky. I mean, you’re still an assassin, so whatever, but that sucks.”

“I’m not an assassin,” Kurt said. “We were requested to come here for a divination into next year’s crops, and then we were ambushed. You’re being lied to.”

“Duh,” she said. “Everyone knows that. You look like a pathetic baby, and your Protector totally could’ve killed Lord Callum, but he didn’t because he was trying to protect you.”

“Then why are you going along with this?” Kurt asked, frustrated. “They’re going to start a _war_.”

“And that’s totally not my problem. Like, I’m pretty sure a war would suck a little, but I’m awesome, so I’d be fine.” She tossed her hair a little.

“Okay, no, look- What’s your name?”

“Sugar.”

“Sugar, don’t you have friends or anyone that’s in the army? If there’s a war, they’ll probably die.”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “My parents are super rich. I’m only a guard because Mom thought I lacked discipline. I don’t like associating with commoners.”

“What if you have to go fight, then? What about then?”

“I’ll quit,” she said cheerfully.

Kurt lowered his voice to a whisper. “They won’t let you. Ask around a little, talk to some of those commoners, and see if you’ll be allowed to quit. If there’s a war, you’ll probably have to fight in it.”

“Ew, okay, no. No one stops me from doing anything.” She was starting to fidget a little more, and doubt was showing on her face despite her confident tone.

“They will, though, believe me. Morrane isn’t that big. If they’re fighting the royal army, they’ll need everyone that they can force to fight.” And then there was the weapon that he and Blaine had seen in their vision. No one had mentioned it, but Kurt knew that they had to have it somewhere. Without it, Morrane couldn’t stand a chance against the royal army.

“He’s here, my lady,” Karofsky said as he rounded the corner. Kurt held Sugar’s gaze a moment longer, and then looked to see Karofsky following a middle-aged woman around the corner. Kurt considered standing, but he knew he wasn’t getting up without help, not with his wrists and ankles chained.

“You’re looking much more awake than you were, Diviner. Lady Elaine of Morrane,” the woman said, nodding her head. “My parents had a sense of humour and a fondness for rhymes. I understand that you’ve changed your mind?”

“Yes,” Kurt said. “On two conditions.” He pointed at Karofsky. “He’s kept away from me, and from Blaine, and Blaine is treated well. He needs to brought in and given medical attention immediately.”

“Is his Protector still outside? I’d completely forgotten I gave that order,” she said to Karofsky.

“He is, my lady.” Karofsky said. Sugar nudged Kurt with her foot, as if to say “see, see?” and then jerked it back when Lady Morrane started talking again.

“I think that I can accommodate your conditions, Diviner. David, pick him up.” Karofsky grabbed his underarms and hoisted him roughly, leaving Kurt unbalanced when he let go. “Now report to the barracks, I’m sure that there’s something else you can be doing.” Karofsky glared at Kurt, his eyebrows pulled together and the same familiar hateful expression on his face, but he left without protest. The woman turned to Sugar. “You go find two or three other guards and a physician and retrieve his Protector from the pillory. There’s a room beside the reading room where you can move him to. And you,” she said to Kurt, “you follow me.”

She turned and set off quickly, and Kurt hurried after her as quickly as he could, but the chain was too short for him to keep up, and after the second time he nearly fell, he slowed down to a pace he could maintain. She turned about when she realized he wasn’t keeping up, and then sighed when she looked at his feet.

“I’ll have those removed at some point,” she said. “For now, just keep walking.”

“Where are we going?” he asked. “I want to see if Blaine’s okay.”

“Of course you do, but I want you to prove that you’re not lying to get privileges. I’m sure David will be more than willing to come back and “guard” you, if you’d rather not.” She smiled widely at him as they turned a corner, and Kurt hated himself for the tiny thrill of fear that the threat sent shooting up his spine.

“I want to see him after, then,” Kurt said, trying to claw back some of his dignity.

"I'll have you put in the same room to recover," she said. "You'll be guarded, of course, but you'll be allowed to speak to each other. Will I have your cooperation?"

Kurt nodded, and hoped and hoped that he was right, that he could pull off what he was planning, hold himself together long enough to save Blaine and himself and stop a war. They turned again into a familiar corridor, and the guard at the door to the room where he'd been ambushed before opened it for them, revealing a dark, windowless room. Lady Morrane steered him through the shadows to kneel on a cushion at a low table, the chains preventing him from sitting any other way. He touched his belt as she lit several candles, filling the room with flickering light.

His cards were there, and so were his trance herbs, oddly enough. He'd been so wrapped up in Karofsky and in Blaine that he hadn't thought to check before. The tiny knife that he kept in with his trance herbs was gone though, which meant that he'd been searched while he was unconscious.

The door opened again, and a servant entered, holding a steaming kettle with a cloth wrapped handle and a single empty cup, which she set in front of Kurt.

"I assume you'll want to prepare your tea yourself," Elaine said, sitting across the table from him. Kurt nodded silently, pulling out first his cards, and then sprinkling herbs across the bottom of the cup. The shackles made it awkward, and he knew it would be difficult to perform the reading like that, but she had a frightening expression on her face, and Kurt was done pushing his luck.

He poured water into the cup, and the servant took the kettle back, exiting the room almost silently.

He watched it steep in the dim candlelight, drinking it quickly when it was just strong enough. He set the cup back on the table when he was done and picked up his cards, pushing them back and forth in his hands until he felt the drugs start to take effect.

"I'm ready," he said, hearing himself distantly. "What is your question?"

~*~

Blaine awoke to someone rubbing ointment on his arms and the back of his neck. “You’re fortunate that your hair mostly covered your face, Blaine, or you’d be in a lot more pain right now,” a woman said to him. “I had no idea that it would be you that Farhold Tower sent down.”

He was lying on his stomach, his face tilted into a pillow, and he wondered dimly how he’d gotten home. It took a moment for his brain to catch up and realize that his hands were tied, and that he definitely wasn’t home, but-

“Jaq?” he said, craning his head to the side to see her. “Jaq, what are you doing here?”

"Tower business," she said. "I have lied to you."

He rolled onto his side with great effort, Jaq making no move to help him. "Okay," he said. "You're not here on vacation, which means that you're helping Morrane to start this war, and that means that pretty much everything you ever told me was a lie. Am I close?"

Jaq nodded solemnly. "There was a reason that you were my assistant, Blaine, and it clearly wasn't just your pretty face. Wester is supporting this rebellion, and I'm here as their majesties' envoy. We can't directly support it by sending people that can be linked back to Wester in case it fails, but their majesties have been sending soldiers and coin for some time now." She reached out her hand, and Blaine jerked away.

"So what, where do I come in?"

"You were a decoy. There's some tension between Wester and Farhold right now, and we thought that the exchange would dispel it. You did find your Diviner though, I was correct about that."

"Wow, that's wonderful, Jaq," Blaine said sarcastically. "It's always been my dream to meet the boy who was meant to be my Diviner, and then be captured and tortured so we can be used to start a war. Thank you so much."

"I'm sorry it happened this way. Morrane needed a Diviner, and we couldn't send one of ours without acknowledging our support."

"This is wrong!" he shouted, losing his temper. "I thought I knew you! How can you sit there and tell me this calmly? People are going die, and for nothing!"

"I am loyal," she said. "I am loyal, Blaine, to my Tower and to my kingdom. I do as ordered."

"Jaq, there's a weapon," Blaine said finally, desperately. "Morrane has a weapon that can decimate entire armies. If Wester thinks that they can divide and conquer Farhold, they're wrong. Morrane would win."

Jaq's veneer of calm broke then, confusion clouding her face. "What weapon?"

"Kurt and I had a vision. You should reconsider your loyalties, because I don't believe that Wester would be supporting someone who holds the power to take over every kingdom on this continent."

She was serious now, her face calm again, but Blaine had spent most of three years with her, and he could see the glimmer of fear. "Cooperate with them, Blaine. Stay alive, keep your Diviner alive. I will return to you once I've looked into this." She stood and turned, then turned back. "Please do not be lying to me, Blaine. I'm trying to save your life."

"I'm not lying," Blaine insisted. "And if you want to me to protect Kurt, where is he?"

Jaq pointed behind Blaine, and he missed her exit as he rolled over to see Kurt lying in another bed, the distinctive profile of his face obvious. His eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply, and Blaine banged his knee painfully trying to get out of the bed without the use of his both hands, tied close together with rope. When he was finally upright, he abruptly fell back down again when all the blood rushed to his head.

"Ow," he said. "Okay, fine. Slower." His stomach gurgled at him, and now that he was calming down, a pounding headache was starting behind his eyes. He scooted down the bed to a table at the base of it, clumsily pouring himself a cup of water from a waiting pitcher and drinking it thirstily. He began to feel a little more human after the third cup, and tried standing again, holding onto the bed until the room stopped spinning.

He nearly fell onto Kurt when he tried to sit, still feeling the effects of however long he'd been stuck in the pillory. When he was steady, he reached out and shook Kurt's shoulder. "Kurt. Kurt."

Kurt groaned quietly and opened his eyes a tiny bit. "Blaine?"

"Yeah. Are you okay?"

"Did a reading. Not a nice one," Kurt said, his eyes slipping shut again.

"Hey, no, Kurt," Blaine called a little a louder, shaking him again. "I need you to be awake right now, okay? I need to talk to you."

"'Bout what?" Kurt said, sounding irritated, but he opened his eyes again, keeping them open with obvious effort.

“Jaq’s here,” Blaine said. “My swordmaster from Wester Tower.”

That got Kurt’s attention, and he opened his eyes wider, focusing on Blaine. “Why?”

“Wester’s providing money and soldier’s to Morrane’s rebellion, and Jaq’s here as an envoy,” Blaine explained. “She didn’t know about the weapon though, and I’d be willing to bet that no one in Wester does. Supporting someone with that much power is far too big of a risk for them. She said that she’ll investigate, and that we need to cooperate until then.”

“And you trust her?” Kurt said disbelievingly. “How do you know she’ll help us?”

“I don’t trust her,” Blaine said, “but we don’t have any other choice. What sort of reading did they have you do?”

“Lady Morrane wanted to know about their chance of defeating the royal army.”

Blaine waited for Kurt to elaborate, but he didn’t. “Okay, what did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything. There’s a cloud over the future, worse than it was before. And it turns out that I _can_ lie when I’m in a trance, despite common knowledge, so I told her that all I could see was crushing victory. Blaine, we have to destroy that weapon.” Kurt ran a hand through his hair, cringing at the way his fingers caught on knots.”

“I know. Jaq will help us do it, if she finds it. Its existence will cause as many problems for Wester as it will for Farhold.”

“Will she? Or will she take it to Wester, Blaine, and give it to them to use against Farhold? Cut out the middleman?” Kurt pulled himself into a sitting position and out from under the thin blanket with a clink of chain. His hands were bound in manacles, the length of chain between them too short for him to move gracefully.

“I can take those off,” Blaine offered, trying to defuse the growing tension.

“And then they’ll just get put back on and we’ll probably get separated again. I thought we were cooperating? And you’re avoiding the question.” Kurt moved his hands out of reach, like he thought Blaine would reach for them anyway, and Blaine lashed out before he thought better of it.

“Fine, Kurt, what do you think we should do, if we can’t trust Jaq? Break out of here and wander around until we find it? Because I don’t think that’s the best plan ever, particularly with Karofsky out there somewhere.”

Kurt’s brows drew together, and he looked at Blaine accusingly. “Well maybe if you weren’t so determined to trust someone who’s actively working to start a war, you’d be more willing to think of alternatives!”

There was a clatter outside the door that cut off Blaine’s response. He was grateful for it suddenly, because he was sure that he would’ve regretted any of the immediate, angry replies that sprung to mind. Instead he settled on, “I’m sorry. I know you’re scared. I am too, and I’m angry, but I think that Jaq is our best hope here. She’s a good person.”

The door opened, and a guard poked her head in. “I just figured you guys would want to know that I can totally hear all your plotting from the hallway. I’m not going to tell, but you should probably talk a little quieter.”

She closed the door again, and Blaine pointedly _didn’t_ swear loudly. “That was Sugar,” Kurt said. “It’s okay. She won’t tell, but we do need to be quieter.”

“Okay, but, if she’s the only one out there, and I can unlock your chains, we can escape,” Blaine suggested, “except, no, because we have no idea where that weapon is, and it’s probably a test to see if we’ll try, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Kurt said. “I’m going to keep trying to convince Sugar to help us, I think that she probably will, and until something happens, I guess we just have to keep going.”

“For how long though? They’ll figure out eventually that you’re lying to them, Kurt,” Blaine whispered. “As soon as you tell them something that isn’t true, if you slip up once, they’ll realize that something’s wrong.”

“The other option is Karofsky,” Kurt said. “At least this way I can buy us time.”

Blaine reached out and dragged him close, wishing he could throw his arms around him and settling for laying a hand on his knee. “We’re going to get out of here,” he promised. “Jaq will come through.”

~*~

Jaq didn’t come back for a long time, or at least what felt like a long time. In a room without windows, it was hard to tell, and the huge candles that lit the room burned so slowly that they were no good as a gauge.

Blaine was still exhausted from his ordeal in the pillory, and had fallen asleep quickly after they’d eaten the food left for them. Kurt stayed awake. He could still feel the trance herbs he’d taken earlier numbing him a little, but he didn’t want to be taken by surprise, so he let Blaine sleep beside him and watched the door.

He didn’t trust Karofsky to obey orders, and unless the royal army mobilized in record time once he lost contact and they realized something was wrong, that Morrane was the seat of the unrest they expected, he was going to be handed back over to him eventually, once they realized he was lying to them. Or executed. Maybe they would just kill him.

Hopefully they would just kill him.

 _That’s not overdramatic at all_ , Kurt thought wryly. The thought of Karofsky was enough to make his heart start beating harder, and the thought of Karofsky’s hands on him, of him not having a reason to stop... Kurt took a deep breath and dashed away the tears welling up. He was working himself up into hysterics, and it was completely pointless. It wouldn’t help anything, and he was stopping.

He occupied himself with finger combing Blaine’s hair, picking out tangles as gently as he could and humming quietly.

And then he awoke to a hand over his mouth and a dark-skinned woman’s face inches from his own. “Don’t scream,” she said. “You’re fine.” She removed her hand slowly, and Kurt grabbed at Blaine’s shoulder, squirming up into a sitting position.

“Blaine...” it came out as more of a whine than anything, but whatever. No one had seen fit to remove the shackles around his ankles, and he wasn’t going anywhere fast. He had a right to be nervous.

“I’m Jaq,” she said. “Blaine told you about me?”

Kurt nodded silently, and Blaine chose the moment to open his eyes. “Jaq?” he said sleepily.

“Yes,” she said. “Blaine, you were right. Something is off. I need to know anything you know about this weapon.”

“It’s glass,” Blaine said immediately. “Long pieces of glass, arranged in different ways. The magic bounces off of them and through them, and it gets stronger as that happens. There’s a space in the middle for a person, and that’s all I saw. Kurt?”

“It doesn’t belong here,” Kurt said. Blaine had spilled the physical parts, and that was all she would need to identify it and take it. He could try to discourage her from wanting it. “I’ve never heard of glasswork like that, and even when I was seeing it in a vision, it felt wrong, like it was out of phase with what was around it and only half there.”

Jaq looked at them intensely. “And what was around it?” she asked. “People, stone, open air?”

Blaine looked at Kurt uncertainly. “I think it was inside a building, but that was just a feeling. I don’t remember what was around it.”

Kurt thought back, closing his eyes and picturing what he’d seen. “I don’t know,” he admitted after wracking his brain. “I don’t even know if it was light or dark, because the weapon was so bright.”

She sighed, and Kurt’s suspicions grew. “If you find it, what will you do with it?” he asked coolly.

“If it is capable of doing what Blaine says it is, it must be destroyed. I will then retrieve the two of you, and we will return to Wester and try to stop this war from happening. If it is not capable, I will not interfere.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Kurt resisted the sudden, uncharacteristic urge to hit her. “All the people who would die mean nothing to you?”

“They mean _everything_ to me,” Jaq snarled, any trace of calm suddenly gone. “Do not presume to know me, little boy. This war cannot be stopped by me alone, with no proof, and I am not fool enough to try. If I take shards of glass that have been formed by magic into a weapon that could destroy everything, a Mage will be able to corroborate my story.”

“Fine,” Kurt said, refusing to be intimidated. “The weapon exists, and is here, so good luck finding it, and I’m sure you’ll have fun stopping this war once you do.”

Jaq glared down at him, and Kurt met her gaze levelly. “You have more spine than I expected, Diviner,” she said finally. “It’s going to get you killed.”

“Well, then I guess I’m going to have to make the best of the time I have left,” he said.

Blaine looked at him, obvious anger in his eyes, but Kurt didn’t think it was for him. “Don’t talk to him that way,” he finally said to Jaq. “You have no right.”

“No, I suppose I don’t,” she said. “Don’t do anything foolish Blaine. I will be back for you if you’re telling the truth, and you will both survive if you cooperate. Keep yourselves alive. There is nothing you can do for anyone else.”

Kurt blinked, and was bombarded with images. Rachel, Finn, Sam, Quinn, Mercedes, all dead, all killed so quickly that they didn’t know it, lying among a field of the dead, he’d seen it before, but something was different. The Tower in the distance was gone, and there was a layer of reality to it that hadn’t been there before. The wind blew past him, the sun was overhead, and Kurt knew that there was nothing metaphorical about the vision any more. He turned around to see Morrane Castle, not far away, the walls intact and the gates closed, but not for long, because-

He blinked again, and Blaine’s face swam into focus above him. “-hear me? Kurt?”

“They all died,” he said, the horror so fresh that he was numb to it. “Blaine, they all died.”

“Who?” Kurt blinked, and Blaine’s face got closer while his eyes were closed. “Who died?”

“Everyone.”

~*~

Kurt blinked again, and didn’t open his eyes after. Blaine laid his fingertips against his neck, finding a calm, steady heartbeat, and breathed a sigh of relief.

“How long has he been having visions while he’s awake?” Jaq asked.

Blaine jumped; he’d nearly forgotten she was there. “This is the first one.”

“We are coming up on something, aren’t we?” she said. It wasn’t a question. “A weapon that doesn’t belong and can kill entire armies? Diviners that have waking visions, a Protector having a vision at all, all of that. This needs to be taken care of sooner rather than later.”

She spun on her heel and made for the door. “What are you going to do?” Blaine demanded.

“I’m going to find that weapon,” she said. “Take care of your Diviner, Blaine. If they really do have a weapon that powerful, they don’t need him to tell them the future. There has to be another reason they wanted you here, and I doubt it’s a good one.”

She opened the door quietly and walked out, shutting it behind her. Blaine sighed and looked back at Kurt, whose eyes popped open. “Is she gone?” he asked.

“Did you seriously just fake passing out?” Blaine asked in return. Kurt shrugged. “Why?”

“Well, I don’t like her, and also, being assaulted by visions of your friends’ corpses tends to make you want to close your eyes a little.” Kurt sighed. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” he admitted. “It was outside of the walls of the Morrane, and there was so many dead people, but there was something else too. They were alive and not alive, and they weren’t human.”

Blaine considered what to say carefully, and finally gave in to his confusion. “Kurt, that, um, that doesn’t make much sense. What was the something else?”

“I don’t _know_ , Blaine, that’s the problem. I keep having visions when I shouldn’t be, and I can’t see anything when I try, and it doesn’t make sense. A weapon that shouldn’t exist, vague impressions of inhuman _things_ , and I know it’s not really at the top of our list of concerns, but I can’t stop thinking about the asshole who gets off on my pain!” Kurt spun away from him, standing up and hobbling away from the bed.

Blaine followed him, coming around the bed. Kurt didn’t look at him, but Blaine heard a quiet sniffle, and that was enough. He dropped to his knees and grabbed the shackles around Kurt’s ankles, pushing in a little magic until they popped off.

Kurt looked down at him at that. "What are you doing?" Blaine didn't answer, taking his hands instead and opening the locks on the shackles around his wrists.

He lowered them to the ground quietly and stood up. "We need to get out of here. Karofsky's a threat for as long as he knows where you are, and Jaq might not come back for us. You were right. We're the ones who are supposed to take care of that weapon, and we will." He held out his wrists to Kurt. "Untie me?"

Kurt started picking at the knots. "I think we need to find someone who knows the castle," he said. "Or we can..." he trailed off thoughtfully. "Hm."

"What?" Blaine asked.

"I have an idea. Let's get these ropes off you, and then I need you to call for help. If I start seizing and babbling about a glass weapon, that should get their attention."

"And then what, though?"

Kurt's hands stalled as he pulled a knot out of the rope. "Um, I don't know."

"Okay, how about we table that one. We could go talk to your guard friend? She'd know more about the castle than we do, like if there's an area where they aren't allowed."

Kurt nodded. "What do we do with the guard outside the door, though? You were asleep for a while, I doubt it's still Sugar." He smiled slowly, and turned his gaze to the shackles that Blaine had left on the floor. "Those could work."

The last of the ropes around Blaine's wrists dropped to the floor. "Or I could just kill them, but I like your idea better. Do you want to grab those, and I'll get the guard in here?" He rubbed at the abraded skin on his wrist before he realized that it was a terrible idea, biting down on his lip to keep from yelping.

Kurt returned, shackles in hand, and stood beside the door. Blaine unlocked it, wondering why they'd even bothered, and threw the door open, painting a panicked expression onto his face. "Help, I need help!"

The guard jerked out of his slumped position against the wall. "What the hell? That door was locked!"

"Never mind that!" Blaine said quickly. "Kurt's in trouble, he's having a vision or something, I need you to help me hold him down!"

Blaine thanked the world for providing Morrane with enough gullible people to fill a guard regiment as the guard stepped forward and into the room. He wrapped a leg around the guard's ankle and pushed him down, wrestling him to the ground.

Kurt shut the door and grabbed one of the guard's arms, locking the shackle around his wrist, and Blaine grabbed his other arm and dragged it behind his back, where Kurt clicked the other shackle in place. The guard immediately began to call for help and didn't slacken his struggles, and Kurt clamped a hand around his mouth.

"Shut up, or we'll kill you," he said in a convincingly dangerous tone. The guard subsided almost immediately, and Kurt smiled at Blaine triumphantly. "Help me get him up," he said, still in the affected harsh voice, and they dragged the guard over to Blaine's bed, laying him face down.

Blaine disarmed him, buckling his sword around his own waist as Kurt grabbed the other set of shackles, locking one around the guard's ankle and the other around the bed frame. "And now we run?" he asked.

Blaine grabbed his hand. "And now we run."

~*~

The castle was silent and dark. Kurt wished that he had his boots to protect his feet, but at the same time, he and Blaine were much quieter barefoot.

The quiet was sending chills up his spine. "Blaine," he finally whispered. "Blaine, it's too quiet. We should've seen somebody by now."

Blaine nodded, his jaw clenching. "They made it so easy; they were expecting us to escape. I feel like we're playing right into their hands."

The disquieting feeling of being watched began to creep up Kurt's spine, at the same instant as the heavy weight of a _presence_ settled in his gut. They came to a set of stairs, and the weight of the presence grew stronger as they descended.

"Do you feel that?" he said warily, stopping. "There's something here."

"No, I can't feel anything out of the- Oh. Yes." Blaine edged over so he was closer to the wall, pulling Kurt with him.

"I think... It feels like I'm in a vision, but at the same time I know I'm not. It's powerful." Kurt took a step down the stairs, and a feeling of wrongness began to overlay every other sensation. "The weapon is here. I can feel it."

Blaine followed him down the steps until they opened out into a larger area, and then he stepped in front of him. "What do you think?" he asked. "Keep following your feeling? I've got nothing else, Kurt."

"Yeah," Kurt said. "I think it's our best chance, and then hopefully we'll be able to smash it. Glass is a pretty terrible thing to build a weapon out of."

Blaine took his hand again, a reassuring grip against his growing unease. "This way?" he said, pointing to another corridor.

"No," Kurt said. "This way."

He led Blaine down a passageway and to a set of concealed stairs that spiraled down into pitch black. The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up when he stepped closer, and he laid a hand on his stomach to try and calm himself. "It's down here."

"I can feel it," Blaine said, smoothing his free hand over his arm. "How are you still upright? Protectors aren't sensitive to this sort of thing, and I feel like it’s dragging me down."

"I don't know," Kurt said. "I think I’m getting used to it? It feels mostly weird now." He took a torch from a wall sconce, peering down into the darkness. "Are we going?"

Blaine looked around them. "I don't think we have a choice," he said. "It could be a trap, but what else are we supposed to do?"

Kurt steeled himself, and took the first step. The stone was cold against his bare feet, and he stepped again. Blaine let go of his hand suddenly, and Kurt had to bite back a whimper. "We have to switch hands," Blaine whispered. "I need my sword hand free."

Kurt swapped the torch to his left hand and blindly groped for Blaine's other hand, not willing to take his eyes off of the darkness below them. Blaine's warm hand snagged his, and he touched Kurt's back gently with his other hand. "It's going to be okay," he said, but Kurt could hear the fear behind the words.

They kept going. Kurt lost track of the steps after thirty, and focused on his breathing instead until his foot reached out for another step and hit floor instead. He froze, listening for any sound, and then lifted the torch to reveal a disused dungeon, complete with barred cells and filth. It was also completely uninhabited. Not even the squeak of rats broke the silence.

The feeling of foreboding, of a dark power, was stronger than it had been before, and Kurt edged closer to Blaine. "We should've warned the Tower before we came down here," he said, as quietly as he could when his voice kept shaking.

"We can go and try," Blaine said, "but I don't know if we'll make it there and back without being caught."

"I don't think I'll be able to bring myself to come back down here if I leave," Kurt admitted. "This is...I've never felt anything like this before." He thought he was repeating himself now, but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d been in the Tower eight years. He’d experienced all sorts of phenomena, and read about more, and nothing that was happening was familiar to him.

“Being able to _feel_ evil is pretty new to me too, believe me,” Blaine said sounding strained, but he gripped Kurt’s hand tighter. “Over here, maybe,” he said, pulling Kurt with him as he walked. A sudden glitter in the corner of his eye among all the grey, filthy stone made Kurt pause, and he looked over his shoulder.

“Blaine. There.” Kurt tilted the torch toward where he’d seen the glitter, and saw the light refracted in a thousand pieces of glass, delicately shaped and gracefully curving inwards. “That’s it,” he whispered. There was no point to whispering, the torch was a beacon that marked them out for anyone to see, but the heavy feeling in his stomach was beginning to transform into fear.

He had taken a step closer into the unbarred cell that held it before he realized what he was doing, the twinkling of the torchlight in the glass spindles mesmerizing. “What do you think it actually does?” he asked curiously. “The vision only showed the aftermath of it being used.”

“I have no idea,” Blaine said. “I do think that it’s time for me to smash it though.” Kurt let go of his hand as Blaine drew the sword he’d taken from the guard, and promptly had to shield his eyes as the weapon lit up with an intense glow. His skin crawled with an odd buzzing that filled the air, and as Blaine ran at the weapon, the spindles seemed to unfurl and grow longer.

Blaine swung his sword, scoring a direct hit on a thin piece of glass that should’ve shattered. Instead, it bent impossibly, and then lashed back, whipping him across the chest. He yelped in pain as Kurt gasped in shock, and that seemed to be all the cue the rest of the tendrils needed as they began to sway.

Kurt rushed forward as Blaine stumbled back, supporting him as he clutched at the deep gash on his chest. The reaction from the weapon as soon as Kurt came into range was terrifying. Every spindle reached for him with shocking speed as he scrambled backward with Blaine, narrowly avoiding most of them. The longest one left a long score across his ankle and foot.

A thick arm came between him and Blaine hard and unexpectedly, tearing Blaine out of his grip and shoving him down. Kurt spun to see Karofsky, of course it was Karofsky, and there was no one with him but that didn’t matter because Karofsky was pushing him backwards like Kurt wasn’t resisting at all, towards the still crazily waving spindles of the weapon.

“Congratulations, Hummel,” Karofsky said, and Kurt couldn’t talk, his throat was closed with fear, why couldn’t he talk, stall, anything, Blaine was getting up, but Kurt could feel the sharp glass brushing against him and it was going to kill him, Karofsky was going to kill him like Kurt had once believed he would because Blaine wouldn’t be able to get up in time to help and Kurt was helpless, always helpless against _him_. “You’re about to be useful, for once in your life.”

Kurt pressed his feet into the floor desperately, pushing into Karofsky, clutching at his shirt, but he couldn’t move him. Karofsky detached his hands from his shirt, and with one hard shove, Kurt was stumbling backwards, directly into the weapon.

Glass stabbed into his back, and then there was nothing but pain.

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

~*~

Kurt screamed, but only for a second.

Blaine’s legs refused to work, and he couldn’t look away from the thin piece of glass that had pierced into Kurt at the base of his neck. It was a fatal wound, he could see it in the way that Kurt’s limbs had fallen limp, his jaw slack, and Kurt was already dead.

The weapon opened then, unfurled like a flower and dragged Kurt in, closing behind him. Blaine could still see him behind the glass, his body moving slowly as the weapon’s spindles jabbed at him, but Kurt wasn’t moving, because he never would again.

“Humans are so easy to manipulate,” a voice said behind him. “It’s sad, really. Give them the right words at the right time, and suddenly they’re colluding with another power to overthrow their rulers. Give them a few more words, and they decide that they cannot fight their war without the ability to predict the future, and they give me everything I need.”

Blaine didn’t turn around, couldn’t turn around, stayed stuck to the cold floor. The heavy feeling from before was suddenly literal, and he couldn’t have moved if he tried. His jaw and throat locked up, and Kurt’s body was still moving.

“Take this one, as another example.” A tall figure walked past him, standing behind Karofsky, who stood stock still. “He’s not a good person by any of your measures. He takes pleasure in the pain of others, in causing it, and that made him so easy to use.”

There was something off about the way the figure moved, like it was joined together wrong. It was subtle, but it drew Blaine’s gaze away from Kurt.

“It’s frustrating, you know, to have to watch and whisper and wait until everything is in place to take a form. If I’d been able to enter this plane of existence, it would have been so much easier. Pop into one of your Towers, grab any one of your Diviners, and then pop back here and toss them in, problem solved. None of this time-wasting “Oh, David, you should come down to this dank dungeon and push Kurt into the wavy glass things, and then you can have him forever and I can manifest a body to slaughter most of humanity” or like, “Post a single, incompetent guard at the door and then everybody go right to bed so I can lure my little pet down to the dungeons” garbage.”

 _Slaughter most of humanity_ echoed in Blaine’s head, along with the slow dawning realization that whatever the figure was, it wasn’t human, wasn’t supposed to be there. Tiny shivers were running up his spine faster and faster, and his vision was blurry, but his breath was hitching oddly too and he thought that he probably couldn’t see well because he was crying.

“I’m babbling,” the figure said abruptly. “It’s been a while since I had anyone to talk to who didn’t immediately fall on their knees and go “Yes, your great darkness”, and I’ll be honest, I picked that title in a fit of pique and I’m really tired of it. David,” it snapped. “Go back to your duties. Tell no one that this happened.”

Karofsky turned, unseeing eyes glazing over the figure, and headed for the stairs. It stood there silently for a long time, back to Blaine and looking at the weapon, until the sounds of Karofsky’s footsteps had receded.

“Do you want to know why this happened?” the figure asked. “You can talk now.”

Blaine’s throat loosened and his jaw unlocked. “Why did you do that to Kurt?” He couldn’t keep the sob out of his voice, and he didn’t bother trying. Whatever this thing was, Blaine was helpless, and showing his grief wasn’t going to endanger him any more than he already was.

“You should be happy,” it said. “He’s going to be one of the few humans to survive the end of your world. I make no guarantees as to what his life will be like after, though I have a few guesses, but by bringing him to me, you ensured that he wouldn’t die. Isn’t that what a Protector strives for?”

Blaine looked back at Kurt’s body, obscured by the glass tendrils. He lay perfectly still, and Blaine could see where his blood had dripped onto the weapon. But he wasn’t dead?

“As to why, though, he’s a focal point. I needed a Diviner so I could open the gateway, and he’s the one that was provided.” The figure walked forward, swaying oddly. “Every shred of magic that enters the gate passes through him first, and then it comes through these.” It ran a hand over one of the glass spindles. “I imagine it hurts. Well, I say imagine, I did design it to be agonizing. Can you hear me?” it called, pressing in one of the spindles.

A tiny moan came from under the weapon, and Blaine strained against the magic that had him pinned to the ground. Kurt _was_ alive, and he was hurt and needed Blaine, and Blaine couldn’t help him, couldn’t move. He bent one on his legs with great effort, and the magic re-intensified, to the point where he could barely breathe.

“I almost feel bad,” the figure said. “I can feel you trying to get free, but you won’t. There’s nothing you can do for him, or for you.” It turned, facing Blaine for the first time, and his heart skipped a beat in his chest. It looked human, but everything about it was slightly off, in a way that was subtle enough to be horrifying, and it was the thing from his vision that had been born from Death. It gracefully moved over to Blaine, bending at the hips to hoist him up by his waist and drag him into the same cell as the weapon.

“I’m going to do you a favour,” it said. “You can stay here with him. He’ll be able to hear you, but I wouldn’t expect much in the way of a response. But, oh, right, you’re going to try to escape.” It held out a hand, pushing Blaine into a seated position against the wall with the other, and one of the weapon’s spindles stretched and twirled, reaching towards Blaine. It guided the spindle to Blaine’s bicep, and Blaine redoubled his struggle to move, realizing what was about to happen.

“This is going to hurt,” it warned, and then the spindle jerked, stabbing deep into Blaine’s arm and through. It wormed its way through, and Blaine screamed as the thin blade wiggled past bone and out the back of his arm, into the stone behind him. The thing patted him on the head and said, “Shh,” and then his screams were silent but the agony was still there.

“It won’t hurt as much after a bit,” it said. “Just don’t try to move.”

Blaine’s voice came back, but he couldn’t speak. The pain radiated out from his arm, and he couldn’t do anything but whimper.

“You’re fine,” it said. “Kurt’s got the same thing in him, and he’s not screaming, is he? And granted, it’s because his physical functions have been overwhelmed, but still, you could learn from his example.”

The magic that kept him from moving lifted, and the thing was within range. Blaine swung his fist, connecting hard with the thing’s face. It skittered backwards, looking down at him in disapproval. “You’re lucky I’m the forgiving sort. Or maybe I just enjoy having someone to talk to and killing you seems like a lot of effort.”

It turned from him, walking back to the weapon. “Kurt, do you remember how you started having dreams just after your mother died?” it asked. “How they were full of things that terrified you? Well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but this is exactly the situation that those dreams were warning you about. I did my very best to muddle them up, but I did slip up a few times. Your dreams were real, Kurt, real prophecies, and you shouldn’t have listened when you were told to ignore them.”

It stopped and chuckled for a moment. “Okay, fine, _I’m_ glad you mostly ignored them, but you could’ve saved yourself from this. You could’ve saved yourself from David, even, if you hadn’t have been too afraid to consider what he was capable of. All those cracks in your mind though, from your training, from ignoring yourself, from the abuse, they’ll make excellent channels for the gate. All in all, I’m very pleased with the Diviner I received, and I think I’ll recommend you to all of my friends for use when I’m finished.”

Kurt was silent, but Blaine couldn’t be. “Don’t talk to him that way,” he gritted out, “or I’ll make your death slow instead of just painful.”

The thing turned back. “Empty threats are unbecoming of a noble, Blaine, but I forgive you. I _do_ have things to do, though, and a castle full of people to surprise. How do you think Lord and Lady Morrane will react when they find out that they aren’t the ones pulling the strings here? Too bad the Diviner that they went to so much trouble to get was completely useless to them, oops! They threw you in the pillory to get his cooperation for nothing, Blaine, but I think that being stabbed in the arm’s probably a bit more painful anyway.” It rubbed its hands together. “Have fun!”

Blaine’s vision went black for a second, and the thing was gone, the palpable weight of its presence with it. He blinked, gasping in a breath that jarred his arm and sent pain up into his chest and down into his fingers, and rasped out, “Kurt?”

A tiny, terrified whimper, and Blaine was trying to get closer to comfort him before he remembered that moving was a bad, bad idea. His vision greyed out, and he collapsed back with a gasp of pain. “Kurt, I know you can hear me, it’s okay if you don’t answer. I can’t get to you right now, but I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to get you out.”

“Hurts.” Kurt voice was barely there, but it was, and it was proof that he was still there.

“I know, I know. Just keep breathing, it’s going to be okay.” Blaine wiped the tears from his eyes, how was he so useless, what kind of Protector was he?

Kurt was quiet then, for a long time, and then Blaine heard a tiny, broken hum that took him back to the day they’d left the Tower, the song he’d hummed to break the tension between them. He picked up the tune where Kurt faltered, humming it gently for a couple bars and then stopping. Kurt started again where Blaine stopped, but was only able to force out a few aborted notes before they choked into a sob.

“Kurt?”

“Sing?” Kurt begged, and Blaine picked the tune back up as soon as he realized Kurt was asking for a distraction, humming it softly to the end and then back to the beginning, a little louder.

Kurt was silent, terrifyingly so, and Blaine had to stop every couple of minutes to make sure he was still conscious. When the time came that he stopped and Kurt didn’t respond, Blaine gave in, burying his face in his unpinned arm and crying.

~*~

Blaine fell asleep, or passed out, one of the two, and awoke to see the weapon glowing brighter again. “Kurt? Kurt can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” Kurt said dully, like his mind was faraway, and maybe it was. He was talking again, though, and Blaine hoped that it meant he was in less pain. “I know what the weapon does, Blaine. It opens a gate.”

“A gate to where? To where that thing came from?”

Kurt made an affirmative noise. “The royal army is hours away. Morrane doesn’t know that it’s coming, but that thing does. It’s going to use the weapon to open a rift outside Morrane, and bring all its minions through, first to attack the royal army, and then they’ll take Morrane.”

“How do you know that?” Blaine asked.

“I can see everything, Blaine, the fog over the future is gone. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it will, and I’m sorry that you got dragged into this.” Kurt was quiet, resigned, and Blaine reached up to grasp the tendril that was still in his arm.

“I’m supposed to have a choice,” he said. “An important choice, that determines how this ends.”

“I think you’ve already made it, Blaine. I’m sorry.” Kurt fell silent, and Blaine felt a surge of anger.

“No, no, this is not going to happen. I’m not going to let this happen,” he said. He tightened his grip on the tendril. “Kurt, what sort of connection do you have with the weapon?”

“Physical,” he said. “I can feel it in me, and in my head. What are you thinking?”

“If I can get you out of there, it can’t use you, and it won’t be able to open a gate, right?” Blaine felt a bit of hope, and tugged harder, the glass slipping in his hand.

“Yes, but I can’t move Blaine, I can’t get out of this. But...” he stopped, and Blaine could _hear_ him thinking.

“No.”

“If I die-”

“ _No_ , Kurt.”

“If I die now, Blaine, you live. Rachel lives, the army lives. There will still be a war, but that _thing_ won’t be the victor.” Kurt spoke fast, a frantic hope in his voice.

“ _No_!”

“Blaine, please.” Kurt’s bravado was gone, the courage that was at the very core of him all that Blaine could hear. “I can see what happens when it wins. Please don’t make me live it. Maybe- maybe this is your choice. And I do trust you, Blaine. You’re my Protector, you have been since I met you, and I’m yours. Being with you, it made me happier than I’ve ever been, please don’t make me watch as I’m used to kill you.”

“ _Kurt_ ,” and Blaine was crying now, but the spindle wouldn’t break. He jerked in frustration, and pain exploded in his arm, but he moved forward, bloody glass sliding through his arm, and he knew that there was only one way he was getting to Kurt. He pulled himself forward, inch by agonizing inch along the thin glass, shaking with the effort, until he was dragging himself into the weapon, pulsing with light but not reacting to Blaine brushing through it.

Kurt was in the very center, his eyes wide open and his face wet with tears, laying in a puddle of his own blood, with tendrils stabbing into him all over his body. His eyes fixed on Blaine, and he breathed out, “Please.”

Blaine stared down at him, at the boy that he’d known for a month, but that month had been so _much_ , for both to them, and he knew that he’d reached the moment when he had to make his choice.

He did.

And then the world disappeared in a flash of light.

~*~

Kurt had thought he was dead when Karofsky had shoved him back. As it turned out, he was dead. It was just taking much longer than he’d thought.

The tendrils were thin, and sharp, and the agony he’d felt as they stabbed through his skin and begun to course magic through him had been immeasurable. He’d lost awareness then, drowning in pain and anger and a new connection that he could feel growing, until everything had snapped into place, and the pain was bone deep and tearing him away, but he was aware, could hear everything, could see everything.

The dreams had been real. They always had been. From the time he was born, this was always going to be him, because he was never going to fully understand the warning that they held until it was too late, and he had walked down those steps and delivered himself, signed the death warrant of everyone and everything he had ever known.

His body might survive, but he could already feel his mind crumbling under the pressure that the weapon placed on it, feel the magic tearing through him, waiting for the order. Desperate, losing himself, Kurt closed his eyes, and what came to mind was that first day on the road with Blaine.

Blaine knew everything about him now, all his secrets, all his fears, and the sweet little tune that he’d awkwardly hummed to break the silence between them the first day echoed in Kurt’s ears with the quiet buzzing of the weapon and the painful _thud thud thud_ of his heart as it tried to keep beating.

Music was comforting. Music had been his friend when no one else was there, and even when there had been. Now though, doomed, unable to move, in more pain than he thought imaginable, music was failing him. He could hear it in his head, but his voice couldn’t obey.

And then Blaine was there, his voice thin and pained and beautiful, so beautiful, and Kurt clung to that as the pain welled up and pulled him under. Blaine was there.

It was quiet when he came back, but only around his body. The world was loud, and bright, and the royal army was on its way to Morrane, and they were all going to die. Rachel walked beside Finn, their faces stressed and drawn, and Sam and Mercedes each clutched one of Quinn’s hands. Mercedes looked as though she hadn’t slept, and she was scared for him. Kurt knew it like he knew his room at the Tower. They were all scared for him, and they had come to help him, and they were all going to die for it, because he couldn’t stop what was coming.

Blaine had believed. He’d truly thought that he would know when he’d come to his choice, but that vision had come through Kurt, and Kurt had never done anything right in his life. There was no happy ending to be had, no way to stop it. Except for one.

He couldn’t see Blaine, but Blaine could see him. If Blaine could see him, maybe he could kill him. Without a Diviner, the weapon wouldn’t work, there would be nothing to channel the magic through, and it would all stop. Kurt could see that too. There would be war. Wester would invade as soon as Morrane was crushed by Farhold’s army, and they would win, but humans would survive it.

Kurt felt a weight in his chest begin to unfurl. Possibilities were neverending. Nothing about the future was set. Everything was always determined by the choices that were made, and Kurt had been wrong a moment ago. Blaine hadn’t made his choice, the moment was still coming, and Kurt could see the one that would be more likely to stop the war. None of them had happy endings, none of them had endings, because nothing ever ended.

And if Blaine killed him now and destroyed the weapon from within before the thing that had built it could get another Diviner, if he made that choice, people would live, at least for a little longer, and they would be happy.

If he didn’t...If he couldn’t, all Kurt could see was death. Maybe there was the possibility of happiness somewhere in the cascade of possible outcomes, but it was buried by all the futures with the creatures that would rip and tear and slaughter humanity like cattle when they were summoned by the weapon.

But Blaine wouldn’t do it. Kurt begged him, but then Blaine was there in front of him, his arm impaled on a piece of the weapon, and it would be so easy for him, Kurt could feel the spindle in his chest that hovered above his heart. All Blaine had to do was lift him a little, and then it would all be over. For him, at least, and that was selfish, yes, and cowardly, but he could see a better future for the world if Blaine took him out of it right then and stopped the weapon.

He could feel something building around him and his coherence slipping away as the pain began to build up again, and the army was still moving, drawing closer. Blaine looked down at him, and then he felt a hundred sharp spikes of agony, and the world exploded into a burst of bright light.

~*~

It was bright, brilliantly and painfully lit, and the tendrils that had been stuck in him were gone. The agony of magic coursing through his body wasn’t, though, and bright streams of colour ripped across his vision.

 _This is in my head_.

Kurt knew it had to be, knew that he was seeing the magic that the weapon was summoning with his body as it tore through the cracks in his mind, tiny dark spots in the brightness. He blinked again, and the royal army was marching towards the fields where they would die, because the weapon was activated, and he could see the magic pooling on the ground where a gate would appear, a rift in the world.

Someone touched his shoulder then, and his touch was cool, kind, and so Blaine that Kurt would've known it was him even outside of his head.

"You didn't kill me," he observed, shivering as a particularly large bolt of magic raced through him and the gate began to take shape.

"I made my choice," Blaine said calmly. "I chose you."

"You chose my survival over all of those people?" Kurt asked, and he should have been outraged, but his head was too fogged with magic and pain to feel anything.

"No. I chose to believe in you. There's a way to stop this, and I know you'll find it." Blaine sounded so calm, so confident, but when Kurt turned around, all he could see was hope in Blaine's eyes.

"What can I do against this, Blaine?" he said desperately. "I couldn't stop a human from using me, how can I stop whatever this is? I'm not brave, I'm not special, and I can see how this ends, so-"

A jolt of magic brought him to his knees, and the dark spots in his mind began to grow. Blaine dropped to his own knees in front of him, staring open-mouthed at whatever the portal was doing before shaking himself out of it.

Blaine touched his face, cupped his cheek, slid his hand around the back of Kurt's neck where the pain was the worst and leaned in. His touch brought with it the shock of relief from the burning of the weapon was in his body, and he said, so, so gently, "When we had that vision, the Fool told me that you wouldn't be able to see it, the happy outcome, so I had to. I can see it, Kurt. You don't die, no one dies today, and there's no war. Can you see it yet?"

"No," Kurt said, his voice breaking into a sob. "No, I don't see it, everyone is going to die Blaine, why couldn't you kill me?"

"Shh," he said. "Kurt, you are special. You are special, and you're the bravest person I've ever met, and you're my Diviner. I feel like I've been waiting my entire life to know you, and my choice was never a choice. I could never hurt you."

Blaine's other hand was on his arm, and he was looking Kurt straight in the eyes, and he was the most beautiful person that Kurt had ever seen, inside and out.

He ran his hand down to Kurt's wrist, and Kurt shuddered with the memory of his hands being tied as Karofsky taunted him, and then Blaine stroked his hand over them, and Karofsky was no longer important as anyone except someone who had tried to break him, who almost had broken him, but he hadn't.

_You fought and you fought, and you still couldn’t stop it, so you stopped fighting._

The words that the Karofsky summoned by his mind had taunted him with in the vision echoed around them, and Kurt knew that they weren't true. He had stopped fighting, but he had started again, even if he hadn't realized it, and he was not giving up now.

Blaine trusted him, believed in him, and that mattered, but more important was that Kurt thought that trusted himself again. "I hated myself after Karofsky," he said. "I don't think I deserved it, from him or from me."

"No," Blaine breathed out. "No, you didn't deserve any of what he did to you."

"I was scared, but that doesn't make me a coward, even though I thought it did. Being a coward is when you stop trying because it's hard, and I refuse to be that." He put his hand over Blaine's at the back of his neck and looked past him, at where one of the largest cracks of darkness had been. It was gone.

He turned to look out at the field, where the rift was still forming, but slower and slower, and the magic was moving about them less violently. The pain didn't return to the places where Blaine had touched him, and Kurt closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the machine was back, he was back in the world, and he was lying down and still paralyzed, but it was different than it had been. Everything was different. "I can see it," he gasped out, his head and heart suddenly light. Blaine. I can see it."

"Tell me about it," Blaine said, his voice weak and raspy. He was perfectly still, touching Kurt with one hand, the other one impaled straight through by a piece of the weapon in a gruesome way that made Kurt want to hurt whoever had done that to him.

"It's you and me, and we make it out of here, and there's no war, Blaine, if everyone makes the right choices there's no war, and no one dies, and it's _perfect_ , Blaine, but I don't know how to get there." The magic was building up behind him, beginning to surge and batter at his mind, and control was beginning to elude him again.

"It'll happen," Blaine said. "Think about this, now. Everything goes through you, Kurt. If you stop the flow of magic, you stop the weapon." His hand was grounding, and Kurt focused on that, closing his eyes and feeling along the magic that pushed its way through him until he had found a source, and tried to stop its flow.

It was like using his hands to stop a waterfall at first, but he pushed harder, and slowly, unbelievably, the magic began to rebound as it hit him. There was an impossibly loud buzzing around him, but Kurt couldn't tell if it was the machine or his body rebelling. He kept pushing, until Blaine's hand left him suddenly, and Blaine was screaming.

Kurt's eyes flew open, and Blaine collapsed beside him, his good hand over his wounded arm, and the glass spindle that had been inside of him now out, wavering and bloody. The magic pushed harder again, and it burned, like Kurt had a fire inside him, and the thing that had built the weapon was standing over them, its twisted face filled with rage.

The buzzing grew around him, and the weapon began to tremble. Kurt kept pushing, kept desperately trying to hold back the flow, but without Blaine's touch he had nothing to press himself back against, and he could feel himself slipping.

He could feel the shaking of the weapon now, violent and unstable, like the lack of magic was damaging it, and then one of the spindles cracked and collapsed with a loud pop, showering everything with shards of glass.

The thing growled and leaned down, parting the spindles like it was nothing, and ripped its hand down Kurt's leg, tearing through fabric and skin like it was water. Kurt howled in fresh pain, and the thing grabbed the wound, digging in its claws.

"Surrender," it ordered, its voice turned into a growl. "Stop fighting, you can't win, and I will make your life worse than death for a year for every moment more you resist me."

Kurt's hold on the magic slipped, just for a moment, and the agony flooded him again as he fought to push it back. He was fighting a losing battle, he knew he was, but Blaine believed in him and Kurt wanted to believe in himself again. He wouldn't stop.

A wet, sticky hand hit his, and Blaine was still there, still alive, still awake. "You can do it," he choked out, barely audible over the buzz of the weapon. "You _can_ , Kurt."

Kurt kept pushing, and then suddenly the magic stopped, and the room was suddenly silent. The thing howled and reared back, and the weapon glowed terrifyingly bright, and then the thing was gone, as if it had never existed, and the spindles of the weapon were shattering, one by one and then faster.

Kurt stared up at the weapon as it shattered around him for a moment longer, watching in disbelief and wondering if it was over, but then he began to go numb, all traces of the pain disappearing, and maybe there was a future without war, but didn't have him either, because he thought that dying was probably like this.

Blaine wasn't moving, and Kurt couldn't, so he closed his eyes so glass couldn't get in them as the weapon disintegrated into shards. When it was finally, finally silent and dark, Kurt turned his head first to one side, and then to the other, letting the glass fall off his face. He could still feel the places where the weapon had stabbed him, and he knew that there was glass in them and he was bleeding, but he didn't have enough left in him to move.

"Blaine?" he whispered. "Blaine, are you okay?"

"You did it," he said. "Kurt, _you did it_ , of course I'm okay."

"You aren't moving," he pointed out, because it seemed important, but he was starting to drift away.

"No," Blaine said, and he sounded distant and woozy. "I don't think I can."

Kurt turned his hand over, scraping it against glass, but at least he could move it again, and held Blaine's hand in his. "Thank you," he breathed out.

"For what?" and Blaine sounded genuinely puzzled, and Kurt squeezed his hand a little.

"For protecting me," he said, trying to suppress his nerves. "Will you stay with me?"

Blaine squirmed a little, and then he was pressed closer along Kurt's side, and it felt safe, despite the way it aggravated some of his wounds. "For as long as you want me."

Kurt felt then like any pain was worth it for that moment, and he smiled. "Forever, then," he said, his voice sounding like it was echoing down a tunnel, and he wasn’t dying, because how could he die in a world that would give him Blaine? "Forever."

Blaine moved a little again, but didn't respond, and Kurt let himself relax, just for a moment. He'd get up as soon as he could, find them help, get the glass out of him, but he couldn't do it now, couldn't even lift his head.

It was over, and Blaine was there, and he was safe. It was okay to rest, just a little.

~*~

Blaine woke up in agony, and he just barely stopped his hand before he grabbed his bicep or his chest. He gritted his teeth together and sucked in a deep breath, waiting for the burning to subside.

"How bad is it, Blaine?" a woman asked, and that was Jaq, somehow, and where was he?

"It hurts," he said. "Where am I?"

"You can open your eyes, you know," she said, sounding amused. "I brought torches down with me and everything."

Blaine opened his eyes to see the dungeon, dimly lit by torched now, rather than the unnatural light of the weapon. He was clean and in fresh clothes, lying on a blanket, and his boots and sword were beside him. His sword, the one that Jaq had given him. He smiled, and then searched around for Kurt.

He was laying nearby, on his stomach and on a blanket, Jaq kneeling beside him and picking glass out of him. He was wearing very little, unless the bandages that covered most of his visible skin counted as clothing, and his eyes were closed, his face relaxed.

"I drugged him," she said, which both explained how Kurt could sleep through that and what was in the cup beside her. "And I'm sure he's had enough of that already, but it was going to hurt quite a lot to get all of the shards out, and that leg needed to be sewn up. I'm nearly done now. There's also water beside you, Blaine, and food, if you want it."

His stomach roiled at the thought of food, and he pushed himself up with him good arm. His injured arm flopped unpleasantly, and he bit back a yelp of pain.

Jaq stood up from beside Kurt, unfolding a square of cloth. "Here," she said, slowly bending his arm and tying it across his chest. "You're not going to have use of this arm for some time, Blaine, not until that heals. Leave it in the sling for now." She handed him an open waterskin, and he leaned forward to drink, not sure if he could hold himself upright and not wanting to fall back.

Jaq returned to Kurt, pressing a bandage to one of the last still open wounds after swiping it with alcohol, and tying it in place around his chest. She made short work of the other wounds on his back, and then skillfully maneuvered him into a shirt and pants.

"What happened?" Blaine asked. He remembered the weapon blowing up around them and promising himself to Kurt, but nothing after, and he'd never known what had happened above them in the castle.

"I assume you're familiar with whatever that thing was," Jaq started. Blaine nodded. "Well, it showed up in the castle about the same time as news that the royal army was on its way, and slaughtered half the guard contingent along with Lord and Lady Morrane. In the confusion, I slipped away, and found the stairs that lead down to this place, but by the time I had, it was all over. So, I recruited one of the surviving guards to fetch supplies, and began to treat your injuries."

Blaine stared for a moment, dumbstruck, and then Kurt whispered, "How could it kill so many so quickly?"

"It was vicious," Jaq said, but Blaine only had eyes for Kurt. He scooted over as smoothly as he could, taking Kurt's hand when he clumsily reached for Blaine's.

"Are you okay?" he said. "Do you need anything? There's water."

"Water would be good, I think," Kurt said, looking between him and Jaq. "What's happening?"

"I saved your lives," Jaq said, handing Blaine the waterskin again. "You would have bled out down here if I hadn't found the two of you."

"Now what, then?" Kurt asked, after he’d taken a long drink. "Do you drag Blaine back to Wester?"

"No," Jaq said. "I take either both or neither of you to convince their majesties that this war is a terrible plot, hopefully both, along with a piece of that weapon. I expect that the Queen of Farhold is somewhere above us in the castle right now, and that if I have your cooperation, we can stop retribution from Farhold's side now."

Kurt was staring at Jaq, looking surprised. "You actually mean to stop the war?" he asked.

"All sides were manipulated," she said. "This is not a war that anyone truly wants."

"That's all well and good," a young woman said, emerging from the shadows of the stairs, and leading two others, a blonde boy and girl that could have passed for siblings. "But for right now, I suggest that you back away from Kurt before I have to make you do it."

Kurt dropped the waterskin and his eyes widened. "Mercedes?" he said disbelievingly, craning his neck to see her and tightening his grip on Blaine's hand. "And Quinn and Sam? How did you get in here?" Blaine had heard enough stories about them to feel like he knew them, but the threatening expressions on their faces were _not_ reassuring.

"I left instructions for the survivors to surrender," Jaq said coolly. "To avoid any further bloodshed. I assume that they then found their own way down here."

"We got her to show us, actually," Mercedes said casually, gesturing over her shoulder at another girl, who stepped out of the shadows and waved brightly. Blaine vaguely recognized her, but Kurt smiled.

"Hi Sugar," he said.

"Can I go now?" she said, sounding bored. "I was watching that guy you hate, and I don't want to have to try to find him again."

"Oh," Kurt said. "Um, why were you watching him?"

"Um, because he's a total jerk, and since you're not a prisoner anymore, I figured you'd want him to be arrested instead? Duh?" She smiled suddenly, looking pleased with herself. "If I tell my mom about this, I bet she'll let me quit being a guard! This totally counts as discipline, and if it doesn't, I'll just whine until she gives up. Anyway, bye forever, probably." She turned and headed back up the stairs, quickly enough that Blaine was worried about her tripping and falling on her face.

"Why are you still so close to him?" Quinn said, staring hard at Jaq. "Mercedes wasn't joking about backing off."

The mood was suddenly tense again, as Mercedes slowly moved towards Kurt without taking her eyes off of Jaq. Jaq held her hands up, but Kurt stopped her with a gesture. "It's okay. She's not going to try anything."

"You sure?" Mercedes said, eyeing Blaine and Jaq dubiously. "What about him?"

"He's my Protector," Kurt said simply, and a grin spread across Mercedes' face.

"Well then," Mercedes said, dropping smoothly to her knees beside Kurt. "I leave you alone for two months, Kurt, and this is what you do? Find yourself a foreign Protector and save the world?" Her grin warped into a wry expression and then regret, and she laid her fingertips on Kurt's arm. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," she whispered, so quietly that Blaine could barely hear it. "I'm so, so sorry. Quinn had to go home, it was an emergency, and Sam was going, and then I was going, and we had to justify it by declaring ourselves permanent, and things just got out of control so fast that I-"

Kurt pushed himself up and into a sitting position, letting go of Blaine's hand to gingerly wrap both of his arms around Mercedes, who returned the hug, but didn't squeeze too tightly, obviously mindful of Kurt's injuries. "You came, though," he said simply. "I knew that you would before I saw it."

“Of course I did,” she said, smiling again. “Rachel sent me a letter when you two left the Tower, and Quinn did a reading for me, and by the time we figured out how much trouble you were traveling into, it was too late to do anything but join the army and hope you’d be okay when we got there.”

“Is Sue here?” Kurt asked, pulling back from the hug.

“Yeah, and she’s _mad_ , Kurt. She might murder you on principle for causing her so much trouble,” Sam said, speaking up for the first time. “Like, you _should_ think about going to Wester, just until she calms down.”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” Kurt said. “She’s the one who sent us here, even. I didn’t request it.” He reached for one of his boots, sitting beside the blanket that he’d been laying on. “I guess it’s time to go and face the music, though. Blaine?”

“Right behind you,” Blaine said hastily, grabbing one of his own boots and- staring in chagrin at the laces, mostly. Having one hand was kind of inconvenient.

Jaq removed it from his hand, loosening the laces and sliding it on, tying it up quickly and doing the same with the other boot. “Don’t look so surprised, Blaine,” she said. “You’re injured, I wasn’t expecting you to be able to deal with your boots.”

Blaine was slightly mollified when he looked over to see Mercedes tying Kurt’s boots for him, too. Jaq helped him to his feet, and Sam and Mercedes between them got Kurt upright. Blaine offered him a shoulder to lean on, his legs still wobbly underneath him.

“Are you going to be okay with the stairs?” he asked. Kurt nodded, determination shining through.

“We could just go get Finn if you aren’t,” Quinn said. “He does have some uses, you know, and carrying’s on that list.”

“I can do it,” Kurt said, looking up the winding staircase. “Maybe.”

They had to take several breaks, and Blaine steadied Kurt before a near fall more than once, but they did eventually make it to the top, and Mercedes led them back to the hall where they’d originally entered the castle.

They'd made it about two steps into the hall, which was awash with activity as corpses were carried out and the royal army took command, before Rachel was charging at them, long hair flying out behind her. "Blaine! Kurt!"

She pulled herself into a stop in front of Kurt, just as Kurt was recoiling away in anticipation of her running into him. "How badly are you hurt?" she demanded.

"Um, kind of badly?" Kurt said, but he was smiling. "Did you miss me?"

"Out of deference for your condition, I'm not going to slap you," she announced loftily, "but I am going to hug you anyway, and if you ever leave without saying goodbye again, Kurt Hummel, I will tell your father first, not Mercedes, and you can just deal with that."

Rachel hugged him then, fiercely enough that Kurt huffed out a little pained noise, and then Finn was there, and for a big guy he was sneaky, because Blaine hadn't seen him come up.

"I owe my dad a long letter now, don't I," Kurt said to no one in particular.

"Probably, dude," Finn said. "Sue totally had to threaten him with imprisonment to keep him from abandoning all his duties and coming down here with us to make sure you were okay. He's pretty worried." And then he was hugging Kurt too, and then Blaine, to his surprise. "I was really worried too. I'm glad you guys are okay."

"Porcelain," a loud voice rang out. "Front and center, now. Bring the boy toy, and leave the rest." The Towermaster stood near the entrance to the castle, surveying it with a smug look on her face that suggested she was having thoughts of annexation.

Blaine held out his good hand to Kurt, offering balance and everything with it, and Kurt took his hand in his bandaged one. They walked over slowly, Blaine beginning to feel woozy again from blood loss, and he didn't think Kurt had ever started to feel better. Slower was safer for now.

"I assume that you have a good explanation for this?" Sue said, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. "I seem to remember telling you to stay out of trouble, Porcelain, not find the only budding rebellion you could and fiddle around with it."

Kurt was beginning to look a little overwhelmed, and Blaine knew that he personally was ready to sleep for days, but Kurt surprised him again. "Of course, Towermaster. I have a full report for you on the situation here, including how my Protector and I saved most of humanity from being killed." She nodded, an impatient look on her face. "I, um, I also have an amended report on my first mission, which covers the events as they actually happened, and a report on the status of former Protector David Karofsky, who is currently in the custody of one Sugar, a Morrane guard."

Blaine squeezed his hand gently, and Kurt blinked hard and fast. "It was more than I thought it was with him, wasn't it?" Sue said, an odd anger in her voice. Kurt nodded, taking a shaky breath, and she stepped past him. "I'll see that he's taken into proper custody. You go outside and gather yourself, and I'll take your reports in no more than a quarter hour. Understood?"

Kurt nodded again and made for the door, limping slightly as he led Blaine out into sunlight.

~*~

Kurt led Blaine off to the side and away from any soldiers coming in or out, carefully sitting down on a ledge so he didn’t bang any of his wounds. He took deep breaths, knowing that the quarter hour was a hard line, and Sue expected him back within it.  
  
"Can I ask a question?" Blaine said suddenly. Kurt nodded. "That little girl. The one who said she dreamed of a man holding you down and you crying. Did that happen?"  
  
Kurt thought hard for a moment, forcing his tired brain to work. "I think she was seeing the weapon as a man," he finally said. "Or maybe I just really needed to be pushed into that reading. I don't know. It's okay."

“You're okay too, though, right?” Blaine asked, sitting down beside him.

“I’m fine, or I will be, at least,” Kurt said, exhaustion making him honest. “Are you?”

“I think so,” Blaine said. “I was lied to by someone I thought I could trust, well, a lot of people, probably, but even that’s not as bad as it could have been. We stopped a _war_ , Kurt. And we found each other, which is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He looked at Kurt through his eyelashes, fluttering them obviously. “I hope it is for you, too.”

Kurt laughed a little, feeling his burdens finally start to lift. He would tell Sue everything, his visions, the thing that had built the weapon, Karofsky, and then he wouldn’t have to deal with them alone anymore. He looked back to Blaine, and his breath caught in his chest as he realized fully that he didn’t have to deal with _anything_ alone anymore, that he had a partner in all things.

“Kurt?” Blaine said. “I was joking, well, okay, I was mostly joking, please don’t be offended.”

“I’m not,” Kurt said, his voice croaking and disappearing. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m not.”

Blaine licked his lips nervously, and Kurt watched, blushing a little as he realized what he was doing and dragging his eyes back up to Blaine’s. Blaine swallowed and smiled faintly at him, reaching out for his hand again. “Kurt,” he said softly. “Kurt, can I-”

Kurt closed the gap between them, pressing their lips together and hoping that that was what Blaine was going to ask. Blaine’s mouth opened under his in a startled intake of breath, and Kurt pulled back, hoping that he hadn’t ruined everything.

He hadn’t. Blaine chased after him, letting go of Kurt’s hand and reaching around his head, pulling him closer and kissing him deeply. Kurt closed his eyes and opened his mouth a little, leaning into Blaine and feeling a new light-headedness that wasn’t just from his injuries.

When Blaine let him go and pulled away, Kurt just watched him for a moment, the curves of his face, the sudden shyness in his eyes, and smiled. He knew his own eyes had to be wide and surprised, at his own daring, at Blaine’s response, but Blaine was smiling back at him and everything was right in his world at that moment.

“I think we have to go back inside,” Blaine said quietly, after what had to have been a long moment but had felt like a short one. “Your Towermaster will yell.”

“She’ll yell anyway,” Kurt said with all the dignity he could muster when he was still breathless. “But yes, we should.”

Neither of them made a move for a long moment, until Blaine finally grinned and stood up, clumsy with exhaustion and injuries. Kurt accepted his help and slowly scrambled to his feet, refusing to relinquish Blaine’s hand when he was upright.

Blaine leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Sorry, I just really wanted to do that.” Kurt smiled at him, and they leaned into each other as they made their slow way back inside, Diviner and Protector.

~*~

  



End file.
